Fiber-reinforced plastics are preferred for use in lightweight construction because of their outstanding material properties in terms of strength and stiffness relative to material weight. What makes them so competitive is a relatively simple, yet high quality fabrication with guaranteed local material properties. The market potential is huge for fiber-reinforced polymers for use in components to the extent they can guarantee, under manufacturing conditions, the same quality as the homogenous materials.

The MISES-FOK project examines the latest methods of multi-scale modeling and simulation for fiber-reinforced polymers and produces application ready simulation tools. The simulation systems used for multi-scale, fiber-reinforced polymers include: injection moulding with coupled flow-induced fiber orientation dynamics that take into account wall effects and fiber-fiber interactions, numerical up-scaling of the fiber dynamics for continuum mechanical modeling, and finally, local non-linear structural analysis.

The project aim is to design components with local fiber orientation and calculate anisotropy, warping, and shrinkage. The ability to predict damage, delamination, and failure is another objective of the project.

The key to the use of this innovative simulation technology in industrial processes is the ability to validate, with a high degree of accuracy, the predicted fiber orientation and associated strength and then to apply this result in quality assurance.

The project also tests the resulting material models on several very different sample applications of major economic importance:

• Glass fiber-reinforced injection mould components (GFRP) in automotive systems and automobile interior components
• Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) for high performance applications in the aircraft industry.