Abstract:
The permeability behaviour of woven textiles at different compaction levels is predicted using textile modelling techniques. Unit cell geometries, reflecting the textile structure are created from data obtained through image analysis on scanned images of the textile. These unit cells are then used to create voxel meshes representing the volume which the fluid (resin) fills. By executing flow simulations on these meshes, the permeability characteristics may be obtained, and results for uncompacted textile are in good agreement with results obtained through experiments. A number of different methods used to account for the change in textile architecture due to applied compaction are integrated into the existing automated prediction process (executed through the Matlab environment). The resulting permeability predictions of single layer textiles are compared to experimental results. For most methods, the change in permeability behaviour due to compaction is captured at lower compaction levels, however further modelling will need to be integrated in order to capture the change in behaviour at higher compaction levels.