Four-dimensional (4D) printing, a new technology emerged from additive manufacturing (3D printing), is widely known for its capability of programming post-fabrication shape-changing into artifacts. Fused deposition modeling (FDM)-based 4D printing, in particular, uses thermoplastics to produce artifacts and requires computational analysis to assist the design processes of complex geometries. However, these artifacts are weak against structural loads, and the design quality can be limited by less accurate material models and numerical simulations. To address these issues, this paper propounds a composite structure design made of two materials – polylactic acid (PLA) and carbon fiber reinforced PLA (CFPLA) – to increase the structural strength of 4D printed artifacts and a workflow composed of several physical experiments and series of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) to characterize materials. We apply this workflow to 3D printed samples fabricated with different printed parameters to accurately characterize the materials and implement a sequential finite element analysis (FEA) to achieve accurate simulations. The accuracy of deformation induced by the triggering process is both computationally and experimentally verified with several creative design examples and is measured to be at least 95%, with a confidence interval of (0.972,0.985). We believe the presented workflow is essential to the combination of geometry, material mechanism and design, and has various potential applications. Display omitted •A novel workflow is proposed for forward design, with accurate material property characterization and precise FEA simulation. This workflow supports robust and accurate fabrication of the designed object through an iterative optimization process and accurate control of the final configuration.•The material properties of 3D printing polymers, including both PLA and CFPLA, are characterized in a precise way based on the DMA experiments. The characterization results are effectively incorporated into FEA with accurate mathematical models.•A sequential FEA is developed to achieve accurate simulation results, considering both the residual stress releasing and the body force creeping. We simulate these two processes in a sequence to precisely derive the final deformation of the fabricated product.