Determining micro- and macro- geometry of fabric and fabric reinforced composites

Textile composites are made from textile fabric and resin. Depending on the weaving pattern, composite reinforcements can be characterized into two groups: uniform fabric and near-net shape fabric. Uniform fabric can be treated as an assembly of its smallest repeating pattern also called a unit cell; the latter is a single component with complex structure. Due to advantages of cost savings and inherent toughness, near-net shape fabric has gained great success in composite industries, for application such as turbine blades.;Mechanical properties of textile composites are mainly determined by the geometry of the composite reinforcements. The study of a composite needs a computational tool to link fabric micro- and macro-geometry with the textile weaving process and composite manufacturing process.;A textile fabric consists of a number of yarns or tows, and each yarn is a bundle of fibers. In this research, a fiber-level approach known as the digital element approach (DEA) is adopted to model the micro- and macro-geometry of fabric and fabric reinforced composites. This approach determines fabric geometry based on textile weaving mechanics. A solver with a dynamic explicit algorithm is employed in the DEA.;In modeling a uniform fabric, the topology of the fabric unit cell is first established based on the weaving pattern, followed by yarn discretization. An explicit algorithm with a periodic boundary condition is then employed during the simulation. After its detailed geometry is obtained, the unit cell is then assembled to yield a fabric micro-geometry. Fabric micro-geometry can be expressed at both fiber- and yarn-levels.;In modeling a near-net shape fabric component, all theories used in simulating the uniform fabric are kept except the periodic boundary condition. Since simulating the entire component at the fiber-level requires a large amount of time and memory, parallel program is used during the simulation.;In modeling a net-shape composite, a dynamic molding process is simulated. The near-net shape fabric is modeled using the DEA. Mold surfaces are modeled by standard meshes. Long vertical elements that only take compressive forces are proposed. Finally, micro- and macro-geometry of a fabric reinforced net-shape composite component is obtained.