Experimental and numerical study of the mechanical behavior of a commercial polypropylene woven fabric

P. HERRERA-FRANCO; C. BERNAL; E. AGALIOTIS; E. FLORES

Mérida

Conferencia; 17th International Conference on Non-Conventional Materials and Technologies, ?Construction for Sustainability Green Composite Materials &Technologies?,; 2017

CICY

In this work, the tensile properties of a low􀀡cost commercial polypropylene (PP) wovenfabric composed of highly stretched PP tapes, were investigated. A 3D finite-elementmodel for uniaxial tensile tests of the PP woven fabric was built in Abaqus/Explicit bymodeling individual tapes and taking into account friction among them. An orthotropicelastic model was used. In order to obtain an optimal model design for the woven fabric, allthe geometrical parameters were experimentally obtained and the tensile properties ofindividual tapes in both warp and weft directions were also determined. It was observedthat the fabric mechanical behavior is mainly affected by the internal geometry of thewoven fabric. The simulation results were in good agreement with the fabric mode offailure observed in the experiments.