Ive been working in the composite industry for over seven years and served my apprenticeship in the boatbuilding industry using mainly pre preg and hand lay up techniques. Since moving to a company where you have a bit more artistic liscense, I would like to improve my knowledge on composite materials so I can start making my own decisions and knowing what to use and when. Things like minimum and maximum overlaps, staggers, weave structural properties, material structural properties. So if anyone knows of any reading materials or websites that could help I would really appreciate it. 

In the boat building industry, composite production points such as overlaps, number of layers and fibre orientation is driven by specific rules and regulations; under 24m in length, this will generally reference the Recreation Craft Directive which in turn will draw on specific ISO codes of practice/standard or in the event of Commercial Craft will draw on the rules of one of the certifying authorities such as Lloyds, Bureau Veritas or DNV GL as examples. The rules determine the construction requirements but give leeway for things like panel size versus panel thickness; i.e. you can opt for less structure within a hull if you increase the shell thickness or by virtue, decrease the skin thickness and increase the amount of internal structure which gives a fine balancing act to find the optimised weight.