Simulating Effects of Fiber Crimp, Flocculation, Density, and Orientation on Structure Statistics of Stochastic Fiber Networks

Abstract

The Neyman-Scott process is adapted to the problem of simulating the statistical properties of stratified stochastic fibrous materials. The simulations suggest a relationship between the mean number of fibers per zone and mean voids, independent of the nature of the stochastic fibrous structure: the characteristic shape of the transfer function curve persists whether or not the structure contains crimped fibers or if it is random or flocculated, isotropic or anisotropic. This could be an important universal effect. The mean and standard deviation turn out to be positively related for some fiber network parameters, such as mean voids, fiber density, and mean number of fiber bounds. Also, the simulations suggest that fiber crimp has a higher impact on isotropic structures. As crimp is increased, isotropic structures tend to present smaller mean voids, higher mean number of fibers per zone, and higher total number of bonds per fiber than anisotropic structures.