A novel material for simulation on compaction behavior of glass fiber non-crimp fabric.

Abstract In this paper, compaction behaviors of glass fiber non-crimp fabrics (NCFs) were investigated via finite element analysis (FEM). Firstly, the compaction mechanism of NCFs was analyzed, it suggested the compaction process is mainly characterized by the decrease of macro pores and micro pores, a novel and reasonable constitutive model (porous elastic) was proposed. Then, the feasibility of modeling the compaction process for NCFs with the porous elastic material via FEM was explored. A macroscale model of NCF was established firstly, the simulation complies well to the experimental results. Then, the mesoscale models were attempted, and the effect of model parameters on simulation results were investigated, including the model size, platen location, warp cross-sectional shape. Results show that the size of mesoscale model and compaction platen position have little effect on the compaction behavior, while the cross-sectional shape of the warp yarn has a slight influence on the simulation results. Finally, compared the warp yarn cross-section changes of simulation with experimental data, it was revealed that variations in yarn cross sections in the model have a good agreement with experimental results, except that the macro-porosity differs slightly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]