Compression modeling of plain weave textile fabric using finite elements

摘要

Textile composite are used extensively in aerospace as they offer a 3D reinforcement in a single layer providing better mechanical properties in both in-plane and transverse directions. This paper reports on the mechanical behavior of a plain weave textile fabric under the compressive loading. Unit cell geometry of the plain weave fabric structure is identified and its model is created using TexGen geometric modeling scheme developed by the University of Nottingham (U.K.). Later on its mechanical behavior is predicted using finite element modeling (FEM) based simulation software ABAQUS~® incorporating a transversely isotropic material law. Strain energy of the developed model has been compared with that of the published results and shows very good agreement. The analysis indicated that transverse-longitudinal shear (TLS) modulus plays an important role in characterizing the behavior of the woven fabric under compression, while the friction between the yarns and longitudinal stiffness has less significant influence on compaction behavior. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the developed model, exhaustive parametric studies have also been conducted to investigate the effect of transverse-longitudinal shear modulus on some of the important parameters such as artificial strain energy, external work, frictional dissipation, internal energy, kinetic energy, strain energy and total energy of the model. The developed model has the capacity to predict and simulate the behavior of variety of fabric architectures based on their constituent yarn properties under various regimes of service loads.