The role of damage on the tensile behavior of a knitted fabric composite -A preliminary FE study

The majority of papers reported in the literature are concerned with the an alytical modeling of elastic properties of knitted fabric reinforced compos ites. This paper presents the modeling of damage and tensile stress-strain behavior of knitted glass fiber fabric reinforced epoxy composites by the u se of finite elements. For the purpose of analysis, a unit cell, enclosing the characteristic periodic repeat pattern in the knitted fabric, is isolat ed and modeled. The damage is described in the form of cracks within both t he matrix material and between the yam and matrix interfaces. The results o f analysis suggest that in some cases the tensile elastic properties can be significantly affected by crack size and position The advantages and disad vantages of using this method to analyse knitted fabric composites in gener al are also discussed.