Processing of fiber architecture data for finite element modeling of 3D woven composites

Abstract An efficient procedure to process the textile simulation data and generate realistic finite element meshes of woven composites is proposed. The textile topology data in point cloud format is used to identify individual yarns, interpolate their cross-sectional contours, and generate smooth yarn surfaces. A robust algorithm to repair possible interpenetrations between yarn surfaces is developed and implemented in MATLAB. A 3D finite element mesh of the unit cell of composite material is generated based on the obtained yarn surfaces. The anisotropic material properties of the constituents are assigned with proper orientations. The procedure is successfully applied to generate four finite element models with 1–10 million degrees of freedom. The models are used to predict effective elastic properties of an orthogonal 3D woven composite. The sensitivity of results to the level of finite element discretization is investigated.

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