Efficient High-Fidelity Analysis of Composite Materials and Structures
A new approach achieving the best compromise between accuracy and efficiency
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VABS
 
The Best Tool for Modeling Composite Beams
 

Frustrated having a slender structure with a cross section as complex as this? VABS can help you!  
 
Target Applications
 
  • Helicopter rotor blades
  • Wind turbine blades
  • Gas turbine blades
  • High aspect ratio wings
  • Wing section design
  • Other general composite/smart beams/shafts/rods/columns/bars

 

    Introduction

     
    To use beam models such as  Euler-Bernoulli model, Timoshenko model, or Vlasov  model to analyze composite slender structures such as helicopter rotor blades, wind turbine blades, or composite bridges, engineers must be equipped with a general-purpose cross-sectional analysis tool 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).
     
    Variational Asymptotical Beam Sectional Analysis (VABS), an efficient high-fidelity cross-sectional analysis originally developed at Georgia Tech and later significantly enhanced at Utah State University, is a unique tool capable of realistic modeling of initially curved and twisted anisotropic beams with arbitrary sectional topology and materials. Relative to 3D analyses, two to three orders of magnitude in computing time can be saved using VABS, with little loss of accuracy. The advantages of VABS over other technologies have been clearly demonstrated by virtue of its generality, accuracy, and efficiency. All US major helicopter companies and research labs have requested VABS. For example, Boeing has acquired VABS into its Common Structures Workstation.

     

    VABS 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 both structural and inertial coefficients. These properties can be directly imported into 1D beam analyses to predict the global behavior, which is necessary for predicting pointwise 3D distributions of displacement, strain and stress over the cross section by VABS. The details of VABS features and functionalities can be found in the accompanion user manual.
     
    After a period of continuous development spanning more than 15 years, VABS has reached a level of maturity; and its accuracy has been extensively verified by its developers and users. The performance and robustness of code have been continuously improved based on feedback from its users throughout the world.
     

    VABS Documentation
     

     

    Typical Examples

    1. Robustness test of VABS III
    2. Critical assessment of VABS against other wind turbine blade tools

     

    Want To Try?

    There are three ways for you to try VABS:
    1. Request an evaluation version of VABS (Free). It has the full capability of VABS and allow the user to evaluate VABS free for two months.
    2. Request VABS Lite, a limited version of VABS (Free). VABS Lite is capable of Classical Modeling and Timoshenko modeling of sections for most academic and simple industrial problems.
    3. Purchase a license of the complete version of VABS. For academic use, teaching or research, the Technology Commercialization Office sells a license of VABS for a nominal fee ($500). Please contact Allan Wood at Utah State University Technology Commercialization Office (435-797-2515) for more details

     

    To request the evaluation version or VABS Lite, please contact us with a brief introduction of yourself (including your name, organization, highest degree obtained or seeking) and a short motivation of wanting to have this program and which operating system (such as win32, Mac OS, Linux and etc.) you are using. Your request will be answered as soon as possible.
     
    Please notice that redistribution of VABS is not allowed. The code is copyrighted and commercialized by Utah State University along with Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006, all rights reserved. Please redirect others who want to try VABS to Prof. Wenbin Yu  or Allan Wood for appropriate way of acquiring VABS.
     
    VABS FAQ and Tech Support
     
    To streamline the Tech support for the code and theory, a Google Group HiFi-Comp is established so that VABS users can help answer each other's questions and same/similar questions will not be asked more than once. I will constantly visit the forum to address questions not answered or answered wrong. If you have an urgent question need to be resolved sooner, please post the question on the group first, then send me an email to let me know the urgency. Please click here to register. VABS related messages should be posted in the HiFi-Comp Google Group.