Finite element modeling of tensile behavior for different woven fabrics

Abstract

Modeling the mechanical behavior of different materials has been always one of the challenging topics and among them, the modeling of textile materials such as fabrics or composites due to their unique structure has attracted the attention of many researchers. In this study, it was tried to model the tensile behavior of woven fabrics with the plain, twill and customized patterns using the finite element modeling (FEM) by considering the yarn progressive damage. The trial and error method was used to find the damage parameters such as the effective plastic displacement for the warp and weft yarns based on the behavior of ductile materials. The obtained error in predicting the rupture force of warp and weft in FEM was less than 8%. After that, the defined yarns were used to model the unit cell of the woven fabrics based on the Pierce’s model. Then, the tensile test of the fabrics in the warp and weft directions was simulated using FEM on the unit cell. Comparing the FEM outputs and corresponding experimental data, it was found that the larger the unit cell dimensions, the less uniform the fabric, so the simulation behavior would be less similar to the experimental one. Finally, the lowest errors of FEM in predicting the fabric rupture force in two directions of the warp and weft were equal to 5% and 15%, respectively, which was related to the plain samples (fully interlaced fabric).