This month Rock West Composites published theoretical material properties and launched several calculators for estimating the performance of rods and tubes offered on its website. Fulfilling a common need for engineers shopping for composite products, these reference calculators can help estimate deflection, failure mode, and failure loads in a variety of common load cases.
SAN DIEGO, May 22, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Rock West Composites (RWC) announces the publishing of engineering properties for most products and the launch of several calculators on its website for tubes and rods. This information will help engineers estimate deflection, failure mode, and failure loads in a variety of common load cases for several product types offered. By publishing theoretical properties alongside a tool that can give a sense of behavior in a variety of load cases, RWC will enable the customer to find the best off-the-shelf solution for their needs.
On individual product pages, customers will find a section called "Engineering Properties" that will include Young's Modulus, Shear Modulus, Tensile Strength, Compressive Strength, Shear Strength, Coefficients of Thermal Expansion, Poisson's Ratios, fiber layup, fiber type, resin type, and more. Laminate properties and mechanical calculations are based on Classical Lamination Theory and are provided for reference only.
The calculators on pages for most tubes and rods will enable calculations for the estimated performance of cantilevers, beams, axial loads, and critical speed and torque. These tools allow for several fields of input and return theoretical results for properties such as maximum shear stress and bending stress, deflection at load point, maximum deflection and location, change in length, twist angle, and maximum allowable torque.
The properties and calculators will give engineers everything that they need to design with RWC's off-the-shelf products. While the information provided is only theoretical, RWC does offer formal testing services if customers elect to advance to that level of support. Eventually, RWC plans to expand its calculators to plates, panels, shaped tubes, and other products.
"Customer often reach out to find out how much weight a tube can hold, what amount of deflection they can expect, or to find out what the material properties are for a specific part so that they can run their own simulations. We are excited to provide this information online on the product pages themselves, alongside tools that allow them to quickly run calculations for common use cases," said Josh Lyon, eCommerce Product Technical Lead.
About Rock West Composites
Rock West Composites is an employee-owned, advanced composites company. RWC develops, engineers, manufactures, and tests composite products for multiple industries including Space (bus structures; solar array panels and wings; launch vehicle structures; optical, payload and deployable structures), Aerospace & Defense (radomes, munitions, unmanned systems, reflectors), Aircraft (new and replacement parts) and Commercial Equipment (automation, medical, energy, and sporting). The company is also one of the largest ecommerce suppliers of off-the-shelf carbon fiber tubes, plates, materials, and accessories.
The company's mission is to make customers more competitive with the magic of advanced composites by delivering highly differentiated products on time and on budget, all while making the buying process easy. Rock West Composites has locations in San Diego, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Baja California, Mexico.
Media Contact
Julia Willis, Rock West Composites, Inc., 1 8585376260 109, [email protected], Rock West Composites, Inc.
SOURCE Rock West Composites, Inc.

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