Analysis of spherical compression performance of warp-knitted spacer fabrics

Warp-knitted spacer fabrics for cushion products are in contact with different parts of human body. Surface shapes of most contacting parts can be simplified as spherical caps, while there are few reports on relationship between sphere diameter and compression property of spacer fabric. Therefore, the main content dealt with in the paper was to conduct spherical compression and simulation analysis of warp-knitted spacer fabrics. Five spherical indenters were selected and three compression indices were featured. Comparisons of compression indices results of spacer fabrics amongst five spherical indenters exhibited good relations. Moreover, spherical compression behavior was simulated by finite element method to better understand the mechanism of spherical compression deformation of warp-knitted spacer fabrics. The results that relative errors of the compression indices were all small showed a good accordance between theoretical and experimental results; then, stress distribution and displacement evolutions were analyzed to discover deformation mechanism of spacer filaments compressed. It is effective to simulate the spherical compression performance between different parts of human body and spacer fabric.