Textile mechanics

TexGen has been used to create the geometry of fabrics for meso-scale textile mechanics modelling. Meshing can either be done directly within TexGen or geometry can be exported to the two most common CAD exchange file formats, IGES and STEP. Alternatively Python scripts can be used to transfer geometry to specific third party applications such as ABAQUS.

Investigation into the effect of fabric architectures on fabric mechanical properties have been carried out based on input data from TexGen. For example, the figure below shows two of the results obtained from FE simulations. Fig. (a) shows how much frictional energy is dissipated when the fabric unit cell is deformed in shear [2 Martin] and Fig. b shows the effect of yarn crimp height on a unit cell compression hebaviour ( I will modify Fig.b later).

Periodic boundary conditions and multiple contacts must be applied to unit cell of the textile modelling to replicate their repeating nature and allow yarns sliding over each other. ( Martin can add on here about the techniques of sorting out the problems please?)