Robust conformal adaptive meshing of complex textile composites unit cells

Abstract A methodology to create conformal tetrahedral meshes of realistic woven unit cells for mesoscale analysis is presented. A voxel representation is used and the quadrangle surface mesh of the yarns is smoothed by a constrained surface division technique associated with a control of the yarn volume. The jagged effect is removed and, as the connectivity is unchanged, a conformal surface mesh is obtained. Simultaneously, a triangle surface mesh, free of intersections, is created. A first tetrahedral mesh is performed using an inner grid and an unstructured mesh generator. In a final step, mesh adaptation or coarsening is carried out to reduce drastically the computational cost of the finite element analysis. The approach is very robust and complex woven unit cells with a high number of yarns into contact can be meshed at an accurate yarn volume ratio compared to the voxel model.