Geometrical Modelling of Tubular and Flat Braids Within the Jamming Limits—Verification and Limitations

Abstract

Designing and developing braids requires specific knowledge about the structure, properties of the yarn, settings of the machine and other parameters. There are several works in the scientific literature that provide a large number of equations to calculate unknown braid parameters if some of the other values are known. Most of these works are useful for a scientific approach, but are often not practical for the everyday use in an industrial workspace environment. It would simply take too much time and effort for an engineer in a braiding company, to solve integrals in order to find the mass of a braid or another parameter. This paper presents an evaluation of the software TexMind Braider, which implements the above-mentioned scientific equations and performs several calculations automatically for the user. The benchmark has the goal to check and identify possible applications of this software, to find errors in the implementation or in the theories behind the equations and to state the general limitations of using geometrical models for modelling. The comparison will include a tubular braid with a monofilament yarn, a tubular braid with a multifilament yarn and a flat braid with a monofilament yarn.