Kinematic and mechanical response of dry woven fabrics in through-thickness compression: Virtual fiber modeling with mesh overlay technique and experimental validation

The through-thickness compressive behavior of fabric reinforcements is crucial in liquid composite molding manufacturing processes. Predictive simulations the response are thus necessary to enable a virtual processing workflow. These complex however, as reinforcement fabrics non-linear. Altough fiber modeling has proven be strong kinematical tool, it cannot predict due lack bending stiffness fibers. Here, we describe solution that enables predictive through hybrid It based on an overlay mesh-element technique, combining both (i) finite elements determine in-plane properties well (ii) out-of-plane bending. Using these fibers, compression twill woven ply simulated and experimentally validated using ?CT-based compliance-based measurements. Excellent agreement between simulation experiment obtained for right set input parameters.