Virtual textile composites software WiseTex: Integration with micro-mechanical, permeability and structural analysis

The internal geometry of textile reinforcements is an important factor of the reinforcement performance during composite manufacturing and in the service life of the composite material. When a 3D-shaped composite part is concerned, the reinforcement is locally deformed (compressed, stretched and sheared), and any model describing the internal geometry of the reinforcement should account for this deformation. The software package WiseTex implements a generalised description of internal structure of textile reinforcements on the unit cell level, integrated with mechanical models of the relaxed and deformed state of 2D- and 3D-woven, two- and three-axial braided, weft-knitted and non-crimp warp-knit stitched fabrics and laminates. It is integrated with modelling of resin flow, micro-mechanical calculations of properties of textile based composites and micro–macro analysis of composite parts, finite element models and virtual reality software. The paper describes this family of models, which use a unified description of the geometry of the reinforcement unit cell.