A generalised method for the coupling of a parallelogram-like unit cell with a macroscopic finite element to simulate the behaviour of textiles

To simulate the behaviour of textiles, three major characteristics are important, kinematic fibre interaction, shear behaviour, and thickness changes of the fabric caused by shearing. Instead of anisotropic continuum mechanical models normally used, a macroscopic finite element coupled with an internal unit cell, made of beam elements is proposed here. The beam elements represent the yarns. The method is generalized for unit cells with parallelogram shaped unit cell geometries. The coupled unit cell model can improve finite element simulations, in terms of calculation time and modelling effort, because the major characteristics named before can be described in detail by the unit cell without using full-scale models.