After attending the CINEMAX III summer school where they used python notebooks (Jupyter notebook) for teaching with great success, I decided to try to see if I could find a good way to use them for my research as well. Since it is possible to combine python code including the output with text that can be formatted as in Latex, I think a Jupyter notebook is a great way of sharing one’s research codes in an understandable way. Aside from using a notebook for research purposes, it is also a great tool for teaching and sharing codes for standard calculation methods.
In order for me to become more familiar with the Jupyter notebooks, I decided to start by making an example of a calculation commonly used within fibre reinforced composite materials research. The case I chose as a starting point was the application of classical laminate theory to find the stiffness of a laminated fibre composite with a given layup. A static version of the Jupyter notebook is shown below, but the actual notebook can be downloaded from here. You can also find more notebooks I made under “python notebooks” in the menu. Note that to view an interactive version of the notebook it is necessary to install Jupyter Notebooks. A guide can be found here: https://jupyter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html.