Stress and failure analysis of textile composites using a global/local finite element method

Textile composites are known to have improved out-of-plane properties and impact resistance. However, detailed analysis of textile composites is very difficult to perform due to the geometric complexity. In the present study, a practical computational procedure based on a global/local finite element method was developed for detailed analysis of textile composites. This procedure utilizes two problem levels: global and local levels. At the global level, an initial solution was obtained using a coarse global mesh. At the local level, a small portion of the textile composite was refined in a local mesh and analyzed in a great detail. In this study, single-field and multi-field macro elements were used in the global analysis. The macro elements are defined herein to be elements with microstructure within each element. Both the conventional finite element method and the global/local finite element method with macro elements were used to study the variation of effective properties and failure behavior of plain weave and satin weave textile composites.; Results indicated that the global/local procedure was very efficient for the detailed analysis of the textile composites. The use of macro elements in the global mesh predicted the global response well and the detailed local stress distribution was obtained by the refined local mesh with discrete material modeling. With a small loss of accuracy, the global/local procedure was able to provide a reasonable solution where the conventional finite element analysis was not possible due to huge computer resource requirements.; The effective properties of plain weave and satin weave textile composites were dependent on waviness. The effective properties also showed strong dependency on the number of layers. Quick convergence was obtained, however, as the number of layers increased. The stress and failure index distribution of thin plain weave textile composites were different from that of thick plain weave textile composites. For thin plain weaves, the effect of free surfaces dominated the stress and failure behavior. In thick plain weaves, the relative amount of free surface effect was small. However, near the free surface, the stress and failure index distribution was very different from that inside.