Lightweight Structures B.V. | Kolibri - Composite conceptual design and analysis tool | lightweight, structures, engineering, vacuum, infusion, composites, bridge, thermoplastic aerospace, maritime, building, construction, truck bodies, trailers, road furniture, automotive, wind, energy

Lightweight Structures B.V.
Rotterdamseweg 380
2629 HG DELFT
The Netherlands

Tel +31 15 278 20 99
Fax +31 15 278 72 99

aldert.verheus@lightweight-structures.com

Chamber of commerce nr 27280593

Kolibri - Composite conceptual design and analysis tool

Kolibri is a design and analysis tool for composite materials and structures. Through a highly interactive and user friendly user interface you can quickly analyze materials, laminates or and structural components like plates and beams. Kolibri generates legible reports of all relevant information for composite materials at a macroscopic level. Use Kolibri to speed up your calculations on composite materials and improve your insight and feeling for designing structures using composite materials.

Key features
- User input is stored in databases that are viewed in an explorer like manner with all relations continuously enforced. This leads to unambiguous and traceable input.
- Full isotropic and orthotropic ply properties including transverse shear flexibility.
- An intuitive laminate builder allows quick generation of complex laminates.
- Complete evaluation of ply and laminate properties.
- Analysis of infinite flat laminate using classical lamination there. Including thermal and moisture loads.
- Finite element analysis of plates and beams under complex supporting and loading conditions.
- Analysis options include linear, buckling and non-linear analyses.
- Comprehensive visual post-processing of results. Including full retrieval of stress and strain conditions at every point through the thickness in every direction.
- All input and results are presented in customisable reports of which sections can easily be pasted into any word processor.

System requirements:

Minimum	Recommended
Pentium 100 CPU 32MB RAM 50MB Hard disk space Windows 98	Fast CPU 512MB RAM 500MB Hard disk space Windows 2000/XP

Demo version
A demo version of Kolibri 3.0 is available for you. This version allows the use of all features except non-linear analysis. However, it is restricted to only two objects of each type and will only save to one demo project file. Please download here the demo version!

Licensing
The price of a single licence for version 3.0 is EUR 1950.=. For educational purposes in schools and universities, a reduced price of EUR 750.- is available. Updates in version 3 are included. Special prices are available for larger quantities.

Kolibri - more details

For isotropic materials there are many books available that provide simple formulas for the mechanical behaviour of simple structural elements. For anisotropic materials like composites and sandwiches, there are no simple formulas available. This means that mechanical engineers could not get a quick estimate of deformations and loads in beams or plates based on simple calculations like they can with metal structures. To fill this gap, Kolibri was created. It is meant as a tool to calculate deformation and stresses in simple structural elements in a quick and efficient manner.
While formula tables for isotropic materials are usually based on analytical formulas, Kolibri uses the Finite Element Method for the more complex calculations. The reason for this is that analytical solutions become much too complex for anisotropic plates with arbitrary loading and support conditions.

The interface

A lot of information can be needed for the analysis of composite materials. In order to keep track of all this, Kolibri stores information as objects in a hierarchical tree structure. The base of the Kolibri user interface is formed by three distinct trees, the structures tree, the materials tree and the design tools tree. Structural analysis objects are stored in their respective containers in the structures tree. All objects needed for the creation of materials (plies, cores, laminates) are stored in the materials tree. The design tools tree is a container for tools that perform more in-depth analysis.
Relations between objects are automatically maintained by Kolibri. A structural element is made from one or more laminates, which in turn is build up from a number of plies. When the properties of a ply are changed, Kolibri updates all depending objects automatically. However, for structural objects that depend on a FE analysis, this update may take a longer time. Therefore, these objects are just invalidated and updated on user request. This means that there is never inconsistent information!

Materials

Kolibri allows definition of isotropic and orthotropic plies and cores. Both in-plane and out-of-plane properties can be entered, but only the out of plane shear stiffness can be used in FE calculations for shear flexibility.
Solid laminates and sandwiches can be defined with the laminate editor. Laminates be defined with up to 100 layers with a choice of ply, direction and thickness for each layer. Extensive options for changing, and reordering laminates make the process quick and easy. Of course, metals can be entered easily as a single layer material with an isotropic ply describing its properties.

Structural calculations

Kolibri 3.0 provides solutions three structural modules:

Infinite laminates. This module can be used to calculate the response of a laminate under arbitrary loading conditions. The calculations are based on the Classical Lamination Theory and include loads in the form of forces, strains, temperature and moisture.
Plates. This module uses FE analysis to determine the response of rectangular plates with complex loading conditions and selectable supports for corners and edges.
Beams. This module uses FE analysis to determine the response of I-beams and box section beams. It analyses the full cross section and therefore it isn’t subject to the same limits as Timoshenko beam theory. This means it is particularly effective for relatively short beams.

Analysis results

Kolibri attaches a report to every object that it stores in the trees. These reports summarise the relevant information stored in an object. A ply material object will simply show the values that were given. An analysis object will show results from the calculation. All reports are user adjustable. The user can turn certain sections in the report on or off or reorder them. It is also possible add text or pictures to the reports.
In finite element analysis reports, result pictures can be added with a powerful 3D postprocessor.