Paper number 263

STIFFNESS AND FAILURE MODELLING OF TEXTILE COMPOSITES

Andreas G. Prodromou1, Jan Ivens1, Gert Huysmans1, Stepan Lomov2 and Ignaas Verpoest1

1Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
de Croylaan 2, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium
2On leave of absence from the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design,
ul. B. Morskaya 18, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russia

Summary The ever increasing use of textile reinforced composite materials for structural applications makes the development of automated and computationally efficient design and analysis tools a must. The focus of this paper is on a very important, but often neglected, aspect of composites modelling: Geometric characterisation of 2D and 3D textile reinforcements for composites. Current work in this area, capabilities and limitations, are presented. Two mesomechanical methods for predicting the mechanical behaviour of textile reinforced composites are presented. The models consider the shape and type of the yarns, yarn interactions and crimp as well as the matrix distribution. Two FORTRAN software programmes called TEXCOMP and FLEXCOMP have been developed to automate calculation and turn both methods into practical design tools. These programmes compute stiffness, stress fields and failure. Results obtained are comparable to those obtained experimentally and from finite element modelling.
Keywords textile reinforced composites, mesomechanical modelling, geometric characterisation, elastic properties, method of cells, complementary energy model, inclusion models.

Theme : Textiles

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