Investigations of puncture behaviors of woven fabrics from finite element analyses and experimental tests

This paper reports the puncture behaviors of woven fabrics from experimental and finite element analyses (FEAs) approaches. In the experimental approach, the puncture behaviors of three kinds of woven fabrics, plain woven, 2/2 twill woven, and 2/1 twill, were tested under quasi-static conditions and the puncture load-displacement curves of the fabrics were obtained. The puncture damage morphologies were also observed. In FEA simulation, the puncture damage evolutions were calculated at the microstructure level and compared with those in experimental approach. Good agreements between the experimental and FEA approaches were found. From the FEA results, it was found that the puncture damage includes three stages: fabric tension, weft and warp yarn slippage, and yarn breakage and pullout. It was also found that there are almost no differences when the puncture acts at the interweaving point or between interweaving point for the three kinds of woven fabric. It is expected that such an investigation could provide guidance to the design of technical woven fabrics, such as geotextiles, tufted carpet the background layer, and flexible pipeline tubes, which often suffer from the puncture damages.