3-DIMENSIONAL FAILURE ANALYSIS OF PLAIN WEAVE 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 composite s 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 tex tile composites. This procedure utilizes two problem levels: global an d local levels. At the global level, an initial global solution was ob tained using a coarse global mesh. At the local level, a small portion of the textile composite was modeled with a refined local mesh. For t he global analysis, macroelements were used since the use of effective engineering properties are not in general accurate for the larger mic rostructural scale found in textile composites. Results indicated that the failure behavior of plain weave textile composites was sensitive to the fiber bundle waviness. The initial failure mode was the fiber b undle separation when the waviness ratio was large while it was the fi ber bundle fracture when the waviness ratio was small. It was also fou nd that the stress distributions near the free surface were different from those inside. The stress level was much higher inside than near t he free surface. However, the boundary region was shallow and was limi ted to the outer-most layer.