Treatment of the composite fabric’s shaping using a Lagrangian formulation

In this paper, we are interested in the simulation of prepreg composite deformation by deep-drawing and laying-up. It uses new bi-component finite elements made of woven material in which the nodal interior loads are deduced from fibre tensile strain energy and not polymerized resin membrane energy. Specific treatment is used to analyze the frictional-contact problem between the deformable prepreg composite and the steel rigid tools. The frictional-contact method is based on the Lagrangian formulation and the preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Some numerical tests are given to investigate the performance of the numerical strategies.