PSI - Issue 13

Ahmed Sohail et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 13 (2018) 1014–1019 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2018) 000 – 000

3

1016

Z-yarn

1

1

2

2

3

3

4

Weft

Warp

w f

Z

w w

Z

h w

h f

H

X

Y

w f /2

w z

L

W

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of weave architecture in one Unit-cell of 3D woven composite

In this paper, three weave architectures are investigated in terms of elastic and strength parameters. First architecture comprises of all carbon fibers, the second is made up of inclusion of three layers of Kevlar fiber and the third is of all Kevlar fiber. First architecture constitutes the 7 layers of carbon fiber (3 and 4 layers in the Weft and Warp directions, respectively). In the second architecture 2 layers of weft and 1 layer of warp is swapped with Kevlar fibers (Fig 1). The percentage of layers of Kevlar included is 41.7. The dimensions computed based on the work by Karahan et al. (2010) of the 3D weave architecture are given in Table 1 and explained in Fig 1.

Table 1. Dimensions of the warp, weft and z- yarns, the subscripts ‘f’, ‘w’, and ‘z’ indicate weft and warp tows and Z-yarns respectively. All dimensions are in mm L W H w f w w w z h f h w h z 4.54 4.42 2.8 2.15 1.84 0.37 0.34 0.39 0.12

2.2. Finite element modeling An FE model for unit cell was developed within FE software ABAQUS/standard, solid elements with eight-node linear continuum brick elements with reduced integration (C3D8R) were used to mesh the complete unit cell. 3D model was generated by using partitioning-based modeling technique, which results in the combined material interfaces. Therefore, no overlapping or matching nodes are created on these interfaces in the mesh which gives an