CompoTech Publishes Fibre-First Design White Paper and Technical Resource
14 / 09 / 26CompoTech has published Fibre-First Design: Unlocking the Full Potential of Advanced Composite Structures — a technical white paper setting out the engineering basis for its Advanced Winding Technology, alongside a supporting technical article examining in detail how fibre angle affects axial stiffness and bending strength.
The white paper explains CompoTech’s fibre-first approach to composite design: rather than accepting the structural penalties that come with conventional filament winding, the laminate architecture is defined around the load case and then reproduced directly in automated production. Central to this is Automated Filament Laying (AFL), which places continuous fibre tows at a true 0° axial orientation — something conventional winding cannot achieve, because the helix angle required to hold tow under tension is a process constraint, not a design choice.
AFL-optimised structures achieve 10–15% higher axial stiffness and up to 50% greater bending load capacity compared with conventionally wound components of equivalent size. In highly stiffness-optimised designs using ultra-high modulus pitch carbon fibre, laminate elastic modulus can approach a theoretical 400 GPa — approximately twice that of structural steel. The white paper also covers Integrated Loop Technology (ILT), which provides continuous load paths through structural connections without bonded or bolted fittings; CompoTech’s digital design tools TubeCalc and SHNEG 2.0; dynamic performance and thermal stability; and validated production case studies across aerospace, precision engineering, and industrial applications.
The accompanying technical resource, Fibre Angle, Stiffness and Strength: The Engineering Case for True 0°, provides the quantitative underpinning for the white paper’s stiffness and strength claims. It works through the effect of off-axis wind angle on single-ply and laminate-level axial stiffness and strength using classical lamination theory and the Tsai–Hill failure criterion, and examines the three compounding mechanisms — tow crossover and undulation, void content, and local fibre misalignment — that widen the performance gap further in a real wound component. The key finding: strength is affected roughly twice as hard as stiffness by the same off-axis angle, consistent with CompoTech’s production-verified figures, where the bending strength gain from AFL is substantially larger than the stiffness gain.
Both resources are available now.
Download the Fibre-First Design white paper →
Read: Fibre Angle, Stiffness and Strength →
For technical enquiries, contact the CompoTech engineering team at enquiry@compotech.com.