Modelling the mechanical properties of biaxial weft‐knitted fabric reinforced

Abstract

The subjects of the analysis are glass/epoxy‐composites with biaxial weft knitted fabric reinforcement. This fabric combines the advantages of high in‐plane stiffness and delamination resistance provided by the biaxial and knitted fabric, respectively. The asymptotic homogenisation procedure based on the displacement method in conjunction with a finite element model provides the possibility to obtain the effective material stiffness. The effort to generate a pure 3D‐model of the unit cell would be extremely high. A solution of this problem gives the Binary Model where a simplified geometry of the interior structure is used.Additionally, the Voigt and Reuss bounds for the Young's and shear moduli are found by using the 3D orientation averaging procedure. The results obtained with the Binary Model will be compared to these bounds and the experimental results. The work done for this paper is sponsored by the German Research Community (DFG) in the context of the priority program (SPP) no. 1123. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)