Help needed: Import TexGen Model to ABAQUS

zhangj7 · Post by **zhangj7** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:16 pm

I am a new user of TexGen. This is a great software for generation of complex woven structures. I was wondering if there is an efficient way to import TexGen model to ABAQUS. I tried IGES file, it took a quite while.

PS:Martin just told me that Jon has developed codes to do this, I was wondering if Jon can share the code with me.

Thanks a lot

joncrookston · Post by **joncrookston** » Wed May 09, 2007 9:18 am

Hi James,

I'm currently working on a way to recreate the TexGen textile geometry within the Abaqus/CAE environment, via the two packages' python interfaces. The code isn't finished yet, but it's not too far off. I'll keep you informed.

Where are you working? What are you interested in modelling (what kind of textiles and which phenomena)?

Cheers,
Jon.

zhangj7 · Post by **zhangj7** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:51 pm

Hi, Jon:

Thanks for your reply. I am working at W.L.Gore Associate,Inc. THis is us based company, which also has a cluster in UK. We are manufactuering many products, one of them is GORE-TEX sereis laminated fabrics. We are here trying to understand our products. I think the software you developed will be very useful to us. I am looking forward to seeing your new development in TexGen.

Another question: When I use IGES file to export to ABAQUS, sometimes it will loose accuracy of the original geometry, but if I use STEP, I can get the piecewise geometries. Is there anyway to get the whole geometry accurately?

Thanks
James

joncrookston · Post by **joncrookston** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:07 pm

Modelling gore-tex sounds interesting.

Is there anyway to get the whole geometry accurately?

This is always the problem. There probably isn't a single answer to this, but increasing the resolution of your model (number of points on each section and number of nodes in each yarn) may help.

Jon.

Post by **Martin** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:01 pm

zhangj7 wrote: Another question: When I use IGES file to export to ABAQUS, sometimes it will loose accuracy of the original geometry, but if I use STEP, I can get the piecewise geometries. Is there anyway to get the whole geometry accurately?

As Jon said this has been a problem for a long time. Unfortunately we still have not found a satisfactory solution to the problem. The basic problem is that TexGen holds the geometrical description in a format that is suitable for textiles. IGES and STEP file formats are designed as general purpose geometrical descriptions which don't lend themselves very well to textiles. When converting between the two formats there is a loss of accuracy and IGES and STEP files tend to be very large.

If it can be avoided it is best to skip this conversion step. TexGen has some meshing capabilities for yarns which is sufficient for the mechanical properties analysis of dry textiles:
http://texgen.sourceforge.net/index.php ... _mechanics

But clearly if you hope to run conventional finite element analysis of composite structures you need a mesh for the matrix volume. One way around the problem is to use a voxel method:
http://texgen.sourceforge.net/index.php ... _mechanics