Woven fabric permeability:: From textile deformation to fluid flow mesoscale simulations

A two-step methodology is proposed in order to estimate from numerical simulations the permeability of deformed woven fabrics. Firstly, the shear deformation of a glass plain weave until the shear locking is studied from a mesoscale analysis achieved with a representative volume element (RVE) of the periodic plain weave. Simulations have been carried out within the scope of large transformations, accounting for yarn-yarn contacts, and assuming that yarns behave as hypoelastic materials with transverse isotropy. From the simulated deformed solid RVE, a complementary periodic fluid RVE is then built and the slow flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid within it is investigated. This allows to compute, in a second step, the permeability of the deformed plain weave. The role of the shear deformation on the permeability of multi-layers or single layer preforms is discussed. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.