Investigation of the tearing properties of a new airship envelope fabric based on experimental and theoretical methods

In the present work, a new phenomenal model is proposed for modeling and simulating tearing mechanical properties on an airship envelope fabric. The greatest advantage of the phenomenal model is that such model is capable of calculating the tearing strength of a plain weave fabric by simply uniaxial tearing tests rather than the expensive and complex pressurized cylinder tests. The geometric progression technique is employed to calculate the stress distribution on the crack tip. The stress transfer coefficient Q is derived to be 0.9656. Three types of SEN (single-edge-notched) specimens were researched by the uniaxial tearing tensile tests. The effects of specimen width and the crack length ratio on the tearing strength of the airship envelope fabric are studied thoroughly. A good agreement between such model and experimental data is obtained, and the deviation is lower than 5%. Meanwhile, compared with the new phenomenal model and the Thiele’s formula, this new phenomenal model is verified to be more accurate while calculating the tearing strength of a plain weaving airship envelope fabric in the uniaxial tearing tensile load.