Mechanical multi-scale modelling and simulation of fibre structured materials

• Applicants: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Julia Mergheim; Dr. Julia Orlik; Professor Dr.-Ing. Paul Steinmann
• Subject Area: Applied Mechanics, Statics and Dynamics ; Mechanics
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 165511017

The overall goals of this proposal are the realistic mechanical modelling and simulation of textile materials with a periodic, heterogeneous fibre structure. Technical textiles are applied in engineering and architecture as constructive structures and design material, as geo-textiles for erosion defense of embankments or as drainage layers. Due to their adjustable porosity they are also well suited as filter materials and due to their flexibility and the variety of processable materials they are even interesting for usage as carrier material for electronic devices, flexible solar cells or as bio-compatible structures for medical applications, e.g. implants. To reduce the time and costs for experiments for each practicalapplication case a reliable computational method for the identification of macroscopic material properties in dependency of the micro structure in the sense of a numerical laboratory is needed. The basic mathematical model and the numerical implementation have been developed during Phase I. Within the project extension the models should be generalized to inelastic materials, arbitrary macroscopic geometries and complex loading situations.The key objectives of the project extension are:- extension of the micro model to initially curved shells- accounting for micro- and macroscopic instabilities of the textile- considering evolutionary contact problems for textiles- extension to visco-elastic material behaviour of yarns or fibres- adopting the numerical tools for demonstrator simulations of medical textiles

• DFG Programme: Research Grants