The design of composite parts made with automated fiber placement technology has become an increasingly important challenge to address as this manufacturing concept matures. While automated fiber placement has many benefits, it also presents a new set of constraints that must be considered upstream during the laminate design process. Thus, a paradigm shift to design for manufacturing must be achieved to produce lightweight laminates that satisfy stress criteria while minimizing or mitigating defects. A tight coupling between stress/design and manufacturing disciplines must be achieved to understand how laminate design choices will impact the occurrence of defects, and to allow rapid iteration to alleviate the defects. Development of this coupling is the focus of this paper. In particular, a mapping process was created to translate manufacturing data from CGTech's path programming software VCP to HyperSizer, a laminate analysis and optimization tool. The tool focuses on mapping as-manufactured fiber directions and tow overlaps and gaps to the structural analysis mesh in HyperSizer so that these manufacturing features can be incorporated in stress analysis. For each of the mapping processes developed, a thorough verification is also presented to demonstrate the mapping methodology and implementation.
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