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Aberdeen University PhD Research Proposal

"Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite
Pipes"
Technical Report June 2013

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3 authors, including:
Saeed Kia

Oleksandr Menshykov

Amirkabir University of Technology

University of Aberdeen

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

June 21, 2013

PhD Candidate
Saeed KIA

Supervisors
Dr Oleksandr Menshykov
Professor Igor Guz

Graduate School
College of Physical Sciences
The University of Aberdeen

[Type text]

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

Contents
1. Introduction................................................................................................................................. 3
1.1. Background of the Study...................................................................................................... 4
1.2. Problem Statement ............................................................................................................... 5
1.2.1. Research Questions........................................................................................................ 6
1.3. Objectives............................................................................................................................. 6
1.4. Significance of Study ........................................................................................................... 6
2. Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 7
2.1. Research Design ................................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Formulation of the objective function .................................................................................. 7
2.3. Optimization Variables ........................................................................................................ 7
2.4. Optimization procedure........................................................................................................ 8
2.5. Timescale ............................................................................................................................. 9
3. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 11
References..................................................................................................................................... 12

List of Figures
Figure 1: Timescale from September 2012 to December 2013 .................................................... 10
Figure 2: Timescale from January 2014 to December 2014 ......................................................... 10
Figure 3: Timescale from January 2015 to December 2015 ......................................................... 11

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

1. Introduction
Nowadays, the fibre reinforced composite pipes have been widely employed in various fields
including the airplane, fuel cell vehicle, and electricity generation and communication power
systems due to their advantages such as high strength and stiffness to weight ratio, excellent
resistance to fatigue and corrosion as well as satisfactory durability. In general, the fibre
reinforced composite pipes are used to manufacture the laminated composites by deploying the
fibers in several unidirectional layers and all fibers have a common orientation in each layer, and
these layers are stacked in angled orientations to achieve high stiffness and strength in different
directions. Since the stiffness and strength of an individual layer are much higher in the fiber
direction than in the transverse direction, the designable composite layers sufficiently bring the
mechanical performance in the fibre reinforced composite principal orientations into play in
order to suit the anticipated load-bearing distributions.
The design of the fibre reinforced composite pipes associates the physical and mechanical
properties of materials with the geometry shapes of structure. Before the composite pipes
optimization which aims to achieve the perfect matching between the mechanical performance,
thickness of layers and weight, an initial exploration of the composite pipes load carrying
capacity which is represented by the structural failure and damage behavior is required for
reliable and economical design of this structure. Various failure modes may be provoked under
complex loading and these failure modes may continue to evolve with external loads, and the
damage evolution behavior of composite laminates depends on these failure modes to some
extent. Thus, the knowledge of the damage mechanisms of composite pipes plays an important
role in instructing the practical design and optimization of composite structures.

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

Although fiber reinforced composite materials are demanded by oil and gas industry because of
their high specific stiffness or strength especially for applications where weight reduction is
critical. By using composites, weight of a structure can be reduced significantly. Further
reduction is also possible by optimizing the material system itself such as fiber orientations, ply
thickness, stacking sequence, etc. Many researchers attempted to make a better use of material
either by minimizing the laminate thickness, thus reducing the weight, or by maximizing static
strength of composite laminates for a given thickness. By this research proposal, researcher is
going to find optimized fibre reinforced composite pipes for the oil and gas industry, onshore and
offshore. The most significant criteria have been made in the areas of composite pipe work and
fluid handling, driven by light weight and corrosion resistance compared to metals. Based on this
optimization of fibre reinforced composite pipes in many cases the purchase cost of composite
components exceeds that of their metallic counterparts. However, because of their relative ease
of handling the installed cost, especially of composite pipe systems, is often lower than that of
conventional steels. The cost advantages are even greater when composites replace expensive
corrosion resistant metals such as copper nickel alloys, duplex or super duplex stainless steel or
even titanium. Their corrosion resistance also improves reliability and leads to lower through-life
costs.
1.1. Background of the Study
Fibre reinforced composite pipes have been commonly used in many engineering applications
because of their high specific strength and stiffness, fatigue and corrosion resistances. In some
applications these pipes are exposed to hostile environmental conditions which cause
degradation of their material properties. These composite pipes may be subjected to transverse
impact loading, which causes various damages in the pipe such as matrix crack, delamination,

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

fiber breaking, fiber matrix de-bonding and fiber pull out. These damages may cause
considerable reduction in structural stiffness of composite pipes.
During recent years, many researchers have made efforts to analyze the impact behavior of
composite structures. However, so far, only a few studies have been devoted to investigate
optimization and or impact effects on cylindrical curved composite structures. Some researches
just studied effects of an optimization procedure is proposed to minimize thickness (or weight) of
laminated composite plates subject to complex load combinations. Composite fiber shape and
layer thickness are chosen as design variables by optimization search algorithm to simulate pipe
which lead to reliable optimal design.
1.2. Problem Statement
Currently, the application of composite materials in oil and gas industry lacks proven test
methodologies and understanding of technical and fundamental issues relevant specifically to
composite materials and structures. Thus, the main academic challenge and key aspect to the
success of the project is the transfer of composite materials knowledge (theoretical and
numerical models very successfully used in the modern aerospace industry), into the demanding
oil and gas sector. This extremely interesting and challenging project will deal with the
assessment of composite pipes subjected to a combination of complex loading and harsh
environmental conditions (such as high temperature, high pressure and exposure to corrosive
fluids). In order to move the technology forward it is necessary to have a detailed understanding
of the pipes properties from manufacture and over its entire life cycle.

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

1.2.1. Research Questions

The overall aim of this research project will be optimal design of thick and thin walled composite
pipes. The developed numerical model should be able to predict the deformation and damage
under tension, compression and bending, as found in service (during installation in oil wells).
1. Find appropriate optimization algorithm for optimal design of thick and thin walled
composite pipes.
2. Find optimization procedure to propose maximize safety factor subjected to complex load
combination and structural design criteria.
3. Find heuristic optimization algorithm procedure between structural design and complex

loading with harsh environmental conditions.

1.3. Objectives
The objectives of the research project are to find optimization algorithm based on complex
structural loading with relation of these constrains:
1. Different types of the matrix and the reinforcement used
2. Different fibre volume fractions
3. Different layouts of the reinforcement (unidirectional versus multidirectional, etc.)
4. Combinations of laminas with different reinforcement directions
1.4. Significance of Study
The significance of the study will be to:
1. Find and improve optimal design of thick and thin walled composite pipes.
2. Find and improve appropriate relation between objective constrains and composite pipes
mechanical analysis.
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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

2. Methodology
This section presents an overview of the methods to use in the study. Areas covered include there
search design, population, sample and sampling techniques, data collection and analysis
2.1. Research Design
The study will involve the evaluating the optimal design of fibre reinforced composite pipes.
Consequently, the research will be designed to achieve the objectives set out by the researcher.
2.2. Formulation of the objective function
Objective function is a function used to classify designs. For every possible design, it returns a
number which indicates the goodness of the design. Usually we choose such that a small value is
better than a large one (a minimization problem). Frequently it measures weight, displacement in
a given direction, effective stress or even cost of production. So failure of any signals inception
in optimized fibre reinforced composite pipes by defined objective function will be failure of the
whole structure, even though its ultimate load bearing capacity may not be exceeded. For this
reason, this is considered as a design limit. Accordingly, the first failure approach is adopted in
the design optimization and safety of each lamina in a composite pipes design generated during
the optimization process is checked using maximum stress failure criteria. If a configuration
generated during the optimization procedure leads to failure according to the failure criteria, a
penalty value is calculated and added to the cost function. The overall objective function may
then be expressed by theoretical an experimental researches.
2.3. Optimization Variables
The following function and variables are always present in a fibre reinforced composite pipes
problem:

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

Design variable which are function or vector that describes the design, and which can be
changed during optimization. It may represent geometry or choice of material. When it
describes geometry, it may relate to a sophisticated interpolation of shape or it may
simply be the area of a bar, or the thickness of a sheet. Is this problem are:

Different types of the matrix and the reinforcement used

Different fibre volume fractions

Different layouts of the reinforcement

Combinations of laminas with different reinforcement directions

State variable: For a given structure for a given design is a function or vector that
represents the response of the structure. For a mechanical structure, response means
displacement, stress, strain or force such as:

Deformation and damage under tension

Compression

Bending

Service Loads during installation in oil wells

2.4. Optimization procedure

In research, a variant of methods of operations research algorithm such as Mathematical
Programming Techniques will used to minimize the thickness of laminated composite structures
subject to complex load combinations. The application of heuristic optimization search algorithm
to optimization of composite materials was explained and find suitable one for this project. Main
algorithms which I use in my M.Sc. thesis about Durability-Based Optimization of Reinforced
Concrete Reservoirs are:

Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Genetic Algorithm

Neural Networks Algorithm

Nonlinear Programming

Multi-Objective Programming

So by using optimization algorithm and the measures on structural performance indicated are
purely mechanical will lead to make clear the position of fibre reinforced composite pipes
optimization in relation to such, usually not mathematically defined, factors, we give a short
indication of the main steps in the process of designing a product in general. For mechanical
structures of fibre reinforced composite pipes performed by means of computer based methods
like the Finite Element Method (FEM) or Multi Body Dynamics (MBD) such as ANSYS and
ABAQUS software packages with MATLAB optimization algorithm programming. These
methods imply that all design iteration can be analyzed with greater confidence and probably
every step can be made more effective. However, they do not lead to a basic change of the
strategy.
2.5. Timescale
Approximate timetable for the research proposal illustrated as figure 1 to 3 which divided in to
three years from September 2013 to December 2015.

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

No

2013

Subject

Jan.

Review of literature

Draft literature review

Agree research strategy with supervisors

Feb. March April

May

Jun

July

Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Figure 1: Timescale from September 2012 to December 2013

2014

Subject

No

Jan.

Agree about structural modeling and analysis

with supervisors

Agree about find best and suitable

optimization algorithm with supervisors

Agree about find related objective function

and variables with supervisors

Agee about optimization MATLAB coding

with supervisors with supervisors

Compare theoretical research results with

operational by other researchers

Compare theoretical research results with final

laboratory composite pipe models

Feb. March April

May

Jun

July

Aug.

Figure 2: Timescale from January 2014 to December 2014

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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

10

2015

Subject

No

Jan.

Feb. March April

May

Jun

July

Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Invesitage results with supervisors

Back and forward process to find global best

point position for Fibre Reinforced Composite
11
Pipes based on variables and objective
function
12

Check final optimization application coding,

review analysis and optimization algorithm

13

Final writing of project report

14

Final Presentiona and related documentaion

Figure 3: Timescale from January 2015 to December 2015

3. Conclusion
In this research proposal, an optimization methodology for shape design and weight
minimization of fibre reinforced composite pipes under complex loading and harsh
environmental conditions (such as high temperature, high pressure and exposure to corrosive
fluids, etc.). Methods were proposed in order to overcome the difficulties faced by the previous
researchers and introduce new way of optimization. The mentioned optimization algorithm was
adopted as search algorithm to find relation between structure shape and variables such as
material matrix and the reinforcement, fibre volume fractions, layouts of the reinforcement and
combinations of laminas with different reinforcements. The optimization algorithm proved to be
quite reliable in locating these designs for different materials, fiber orientation and different for
the loading combinations. In optimization cases, the optimal designs can be counter intuitive so
sometimes, when one component of loading is increased, load bearing capacity of the optimized
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Optimal Design of Fibre Reinforced Composite Pipes

laminate may increase. Therefore, a design process for composite materials should be based on
theoretical with intuition or laboratory experiences.

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