Example Bows
The user-maintained repository VirtualBowModels provides example files for various different bow designs. They are intended as a starting point for users to create their own designs. Contributions and comments are encouraged by the original author.
Material Data
The Wood Database provides average values for the mechanical properties of many types of wood
MatWeb is a database for material properties that includes many other types of material besides wood
String material data Tensile test results for Dacron B50, Fastflight Plus and BCY 452X, done by the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF). The report is German, but the results can also be found in the user manual.
Other Software
Python support code for VirtualBow This user-maintained project provides various utilities that make interacting with VirtualBow from Python more convenient.
Features include creation of *.bow files, running simulations and evaluating *.res files.
SuperTiller Is an Excel spreadsheet made by Alan Case for simulating the statics of user-defined bows. It's probably one of the most well-known bow design tools so far.
Woodbear's Selfbow Design Sheet (zip) is an Excel spreadsheet that takes an inverse approach to the bow design problem - it calculates the necessary dimensions for a bow according to a user-defined stress distribution.
BowCAD was a commercialy developed bow design software. Unfortunately it seems to be no longer available, which is a shame because it looked really promising. An archived version of their former website can be viewed here.
Physics of Bow and Arrow
Bob Kooi's Archery publications