Forming of a Very Unbalanced Fabric Experiment and Simulation

The deep drawing of a very unbalanced fabric on a hemispherical shape is performed both experimentally and by a numerical simulation. The shape obtained depends mainly on the mechanical behaviour of the fabric and is highly non-symmetric. The simulation of the forming process is performed using finite elements based on the tensile energy of each yarn. This approach leads to very simple expression of the interior load vectors used in the explicit dynamic approach. The result of the simulation correctly describes the shape after forming and its non-symmetry. Such a result could not have been obtained by a fishnet method classically used for fabric draping