Computer-assisted Structural Design of Industrial Woven Fabrics Part III: Modelling of Fabric Uniaxial/Biaxial Load-Deformation

This is the third of a three-part series describing an attempt to develop a comprehensive computational framework for aiding the engineering design of woven industrial fabrics. The main aim of this work is to develop a generalized knowledge-based CAD system for fabric design. The present status of this research has been described in [3]. Completing the CAD system entails detailed development of an analytic phase comprised of a set of computational models for simulation of fabric behaviour under external stimuli, and for the predictive estimation of some important properties. Toward that end, an analysis of uniaxial/biaxial load-deformation of a plain woven fabric has been developed under certain restrictive conditions. Part III describes, in detail, the theoretical and practical aspects of this analysis (model). A brief literature review of previous work on this subject is followed by a description of the mathematical model, its computational expression, and the experimental tests performed to validate the theoretical results. The theoretical and experimental results are discussed, and some conclusions are drawn.