2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Structural weight reduction with improved functionality is one of the targeted desires of engineers, which drives materials and structures to be lighter. One way to achieve this objective is through replacing the metallic structures with composites. The main advantages of composite materials are to be lightweight and to offer high specific strength and stiffness. Because of their enhanced mechanical properties, composites are widely used in many engineering industries. Currently, many academic institutions offer basic and advanced classes on Composite Materials for engineering students. In our institution, we also offer an introductory level Composite Materials course (MENG 455) for the Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students. This is a 5-credit course with 4 standard classroom lectures and 1 lab session per week. This course is faced-paced in a quarter system. Within this 10-week time-frame, we cover several topics such as a Basic Introduction, Composite Constituents, Manufacturing Processes, Micro-Mechanics, Ply-Mechanics, Macro-Mechanics and Failure Theories. Fiber reinforced composite laminates are prepared by stacking a single sheet of continuous fibers in different orientation to get the desired strength and stiffness. The Lamina Stacking Sequence (LSS) simply represents how the layers are stacked together in a composite laminate. For example, the [0/60/-60]s laminate represents a symmetric composite plate consists of 6 layers of fibers, which are stacked at 0, 60, -60, -60, 60 and 0 degree orientations. Therefore, the [0/60/-60]s, [0/-60/60]s, [60/-60/0]s, [-60/60/0]s, [60/0/-60]s, and [-60/0/60]s represent the same laminate but with a different LSS. The concepts of LSS and its overall effects on structural behavior are only lightly covered in many textbooks. Therefore, the instructors have developed an end-of-quarter project where students are required to work on a composite laminate, defined as [0/60/-60]s, to investigate its structural behavior for different LSS configurations. First, students will be required to use MATLAB to analytically compute the in-plane stiffness matrix [A], bending stiffness matrix [D], in-plane moduli (Ex and Ey) and bending moduli (Ebx and Eby) for different LSS. For each LSS, students will also analyze structural response, such as deformations, strains and stresses when the laminate is subjected to in-plane stretching and bending loads. Then, they will be required to use finite element software ANSYS Composite Prep-Post (ACP) to re-compute the structural properties and responses that are previously analyzed by MATLAB. Students are expected to see a close agreement between the results obtained by MATLAB and ACP, which will strengthen their overall conceptual understanding. Finally, students will fabricate several composite laminates, for the previously mentioned LSS, using a 3D Printer. Then, students will conduct several experiments to see how the LSS can affect the structural response when these laminates are subjected to standard tensile and bending loads. This paper will outline all the details of this end-of-quarter project, including the assessments to measure the student learning outcomes.