Modelling the shear-tension coupling of woven engineering fabrics

Abstract

An approach to incorporate the coupling between the shear compliance and in-plane tension of woven engineering fabrics, in finite-element-based numerical simulations, is described. The method involves the use of multiple input curves that are selectively fed into a hypoelastic constitutive model that has been developed previously for engineering fabrics. The selection process is controlled by the current value of the in-plane strain along the two fibre directions using a simple algorithm. Model parameters are determined from actual experimental data, measured using the Biaxial Bias Extension test. An iterative process involving finite element simulations of the experimental test is used to normalise the test data for use in the code. Finally, the effectiveness of the method is evaluated and shown to provide qualitatively good predictions. © 2013 F. Abdiwi et al.