ABSTRACT
Manufacturing of composites has relied on experience and trial-and-error methods to design, develop and fabricate a product. However, this approach has proven to be expensive in time and money to develop new prototype geometries, which usually translates into high risk, and therefore has hindered the use of composite materials in many potential industrial applications. Use of process models can accelerate the path from conception to prototype development and make these materials and their processing operations competitive with metal and other materials in terms of their cost.
