2.4. Materials

This is a list of materials that can later be assigned to the layers of the bow.

materials
Figure 6. Materials in the model tree and their properties

If the Materials category in the model tree is selected, the buttons (list add, list remove, list move up, list move down) can be used to add, remove and reorder materials. Materials can be renamed by double-clicking and entering a new name. For each material, the following properties are needed:

  • Color: Color used for display

  • Rho: Density (mass per unit volume)

  • E: Elastic modulus (measure of stiffness)

For synthetic materials like e.g. fiber-reinforced composites you can often find the mechanical properties in a datasheet provided by the manufacturer. Natural materials like wood are more difficult, because their properties can vary quite a bit. Average numbers can be found at http://www.wood-database.com and other websites, which should be a good starting point. The alternative is to determine the material properties by experiment with a bending test. For more information on that see Section 5.3.