Computational determination of the mechanical behavior of textile composite reinforcement. Validation with x-ray tomography

The knowledge of the mechanical behavior of woven fabrics is necessary in many applications in particular for the simulation of textile composite forming. This mechanical behavior is very specific because of the possible motions between the fibers and the yarns. The objective of this presentation is to introduce 3D mesoscopic finite element analyses of woven reinforcement shear aimed at determining their macroscopic mechanical behavior and local results such as the deformed shape of yarns. These types of results can be used for various applications such as simulations of composite forming or fluid flow simulations inside composite preforms. Since yarns are made of thousands of fibers it is not possible to model each of them and an equivalent continuum mechanics model is developed within the hypo-elastic theory. This model has to render the fibrous nature of the yarn, which requires using specific objective rates and material properties. From a macroscopic point of view, the shear behavior computed from simulations is compared to experiments, showing a good agreement.