Impact Resistance and Failure Analysis of Plain Woven Curtains

Abstract

Blast and impact-resistant curtains are increasingly utilized for various applications in critical infrastructures to retrofit or enhance energy absorption and fragments capturing capabilities. Investigation of the impact resistance and failure mechanisms of the protective curtains are therefore critical. Understanding the energy absorption and failure mechanisms of fabrics impacted by potential debris of medium to low striking speeds could thus lead to improvements in designing spall linings system as well as bullet-proof combat uniforms against fragmentations. This paper aims at investigating the deformation and damage mechanisms of woven fabrics subjected to low velocity impact. Gas-gun experiments are conducted to investigate the ballistic resistance of the fabrics. A mesoscale modelling approach is developed and validated with the experiment to simulate the ballistic events for various projectile striking velocities ranging between 50–150 m/s. Parametric studies and comparisons are then carried out to examine the primary energy components: strain, kinetic, and friction energy, and their associated distribution within the fabric. The decoupling of the energy absorbed by the fabric provides an insight into the interaction of the yarns, as well as the significance of the energy components during the different stages of the impact event. The studies suggest the importance of the inter-yarn friction in a low speed impact scenario.

Influences of weaving architectures on the impact resistance of multi-layer fabrics

“…Such model could be, however, computational intensive to simulate the multilayer systems. Several analytical, numerical and hybrid approaches [18][19][20][21][22] have been explored to model the ballistic impacts of woven fabrics. Numerical models at different scales were developed, including the macro-scale that simulates fabric layer as homogenised membranes, the mesoscale that constructs the fabrics from anisotropic continuum yarn, and the microscale focusing on the fibre level [16,17].…”

Textiles and Fabrics for Enhanced Structural Glass Facades: Potentials and Challenges

“…High strength PES fibers are generally preferred. Experimental and FE numerical investigations were carried out by several researchers, in the last years, to explore the potential and feasibility of these textile curtains, so that they could be efficiently used as a passive protection device for glass facades, see [88][89][90][91][92][93]. Careful consideration was spent, in [89,91], for the assessment of major effects and failure process of woven fabric drapes (Twaron® plain weave samples), under ballistic impact (0.22 calibre bullet projectiles with spherical For example, several non-woven technologies can be used for blast-resistant curtains [87].…”

The Development of a New Shock Absorbing Uniaxial Graded Auxetic Damper (UGAD)

“…Researchers have demonstrated that auxetic foams show higher strength to weight ratio, lower stiffness and better energy absorption than conventional ones [25,38,39,40,41,42]. In addition, sandwich panels with auxetic cores; have been investigated under static and blast-induced dynamic shockwaves.…”