A Finite Element Method for the Forming Simulation of the Reinforcements of Thermoplastic Composite

Fibrous composites have very specific mechanical behaviours due to their compositions. They exhibit not only the strain in the fibre direction but also the shear caused by the relative movement of weft and warp during the deformation. To address these behaviours, in this paper, a constitutive model has been proposed for the simulation of fabric shaping process, which is based on a meso-macro approach. The strain energy by tension is considered in the field of large strain, and the shear behaviour is also taken into account. The bias-test experiment is employed to characterize the shear behaviour. The model is implemented in the user subroutine ‘Vuel’ of Abaqus/Explicit and it is applicable either to four nodes or to three nodes element. A set of elementary tests and a simulation of bias-test have been performed to validate this approach. Finally, a composite forming of real part is simulated with this method. In the simulation results, we can observe the winkle that takes place in the experiment test which corresponds well to the experimental.