Finite Element Analysis of Transverse Impact on a Woven Textile

High-strength textiles are widely used in soft impact threat shield systems. During the past several decades, a lot of experiments and theoretical work were conducted to understand the transverse impact behavior of textile structures. As a continuation of those efforts, this paper presents finite element modeling of transverse impact of a rigid right circular cylinder into a square patch of plain-woven textile. Two boundary conditions are applied on the woven textile: four edges clamped; two opposite edges clamped and the other two edges left free. Results show that during the initial stage of the impact, there exists an abrupt momentum/energy transfer from the projectile to the local textile in the impact region. The modeling results also show that the textile boundary condition plays an important role in the impact. It significantly affects the textile transient deformation, stress distribution, energy absorption, and failure modes. The textile absorbs energy more quickly when all its four edges are clamped.© 2004 ASME