Modeling yarn slip in woven fabric at the continuum level: Simulations of ballistic impact

Woven fabric is used in a wide variety of military and commercial products—both in neat form and as the reinforcement phase of composites. In many applications, yarn slip, the relative sliding of the yarns composing the weave, is an important mode of deformation or failure. Yarn slip can significantly change the energy absorption capacity and yarn density of the fabric and also cause yarns to unravel from the weave. Virtually all existing models for woven fabric that allow yarn slip are discrete in nature. They simulate every yarn in the weave and are therefore computationally expensive and difficult to integrate with other material models. A promising alternative to discrete models is the mesostructure-based continuum technique. With this technique, homogenized continuum properties are determined from a deforming analytic model of the fabric mesostructure at each material point. Yarn-level mechanisms of deformation are thus captured without the computational cost of simulating every yarn in the fabric. However, existing mesostructure-based continuum models treat the yarns as pinned together at the cross-over points of the weave, and an operative model that allows yarn slip has not been published. Here, we introduce a mesostructure-based continuum model that permits yarn slip and use the model to simulate the ballistic impact of woven fabric. In our approach, the weave is the continuum substrate on which the model is anchored, and slip of the yarns occurs relative to the weave continuum. The cross-over points of the weave act as the material points of the continuum, and the evolution of the local weave mesostructure at each point of the continuum is represented by state variables. At the same time, slip velocity fields simulate the slip of each yarn family relative to the weave continuum and therefore control the evolution of the yarn pitch. We found that simulating yarn slip significantly improves finite element predictions of the ballistic impact of a Kevlar ® woven fabric, in particular by increasing the energy absorbed at high initial projectile velocities. Further simulations elucidate the micromechanisms of deformation of ballistic impact of woven fabric with yarn slip. Our findings suggest ways to improve the performance of flexible armor and indicate that this approach has the potential to simulate many other types of woven fabric in applications in which yarn slip occurs.