VABS- Cross-Sectional Analysis Tool

Utah State University
posted on 11/06/2008

Composites have the potential to meet the demanding requirements of high performance, light weight, high controllability, and high reliability imposed on modern and future engineering systems. Many engineering components are slender structures made of composite materials such as helicopter rotor blades, wind turbine blades, or composite bridges. Utah State University is seeking companies interested in licensing VABS, a unique tool capable of realistic modeling such components. VABS can help save engineering time two to three orders of magnitude in design and analysis of such critical components.

Suggested Uses

• Helicopter rotor blades
• Wind turbine blades
• Gas turbine blades
• Composite wing section
• Other general composite slender structures

Advantages

• VABS is the tool that best achieves the compromise between efficiency and accuracy, reducing engineering time two to three orders of magnitude
• Provides the complete set of sectional properties, satisfying all composite beam needs

Innovation Details

Detailed Description

VABS (Variational Asymptotical Beam Sectional Analysis) is designed to model structures for which one dimension is much larger than the other two (i.e., a beam-like body), even if the structures are made of composite materials and have a complex internal structure. VABS implements a rigorous dimensional reduction from a 3D elasticity description to a 1D continuum model. All the details of the cross-sectional geometry and material properties are included as inputs to calculate sectional properties including structural properties (tension center/neutral axis, centroid, elastic axis/shear center, shear correction factors, extensional/torsional/bending/ shearing stiffness, principal bending axes pitch angle, modulus weighted radius of gyration) and inertia properties (center of mass/ gravity, mass per unit span, mass moments of inertia, principal inertia axes pitch angle, mass weighted radius of gyration).

File Number: W06022

Web site: http://hifi-comp.com/

IP Protection

License Online

This innovation currently is not available for online licensing. Please contact Allan Wood at Utah State University for more information.

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