Effects of architecture on ballistic resistance of textile fabrics: Numerical study

Composite textiles composed of materials such as Kevlar, Dyneema and Zylon are extensively used in many force/impact protection applications, such as body armor, and automobile and airplane engine fragment resistant containment. Significant effort has been devoted to ballistic testing of composite fabrics made from various manufacturing processes and designs. Performing comprehensive ballistic and impact tests for these composite textiles is a very time-consuming and costly task. Numerical models are presented in this research, thereby providing predictive capability for the manufacturer and designer to minimize field testing, as well as shedding light on to the damage mechanisms of composite fabrics subjected to ballistic impact. Several representative composite fabric architectures (such as plain weave, basket weave and knitted fabrics) are generated for finite element analysis. Numerical investigation is conducted on these fabric structures of the same mass per unit area subjected to projectile impacts. Failure patterns of woven and knitted fabrics obtained from numerical simulations are compared with those observed experimentally. Performances of the representative textile structures are evaluated based on the resultant velocity of the projectile, as well as various energy components. The influences of yarn-yarn and yarn-projectile friction properties on the ballistic performance of various textile structures are presented. To highlight the effects of projectile geometry and angular rotation on the fracture of woven and knitted fabrics, a series of simulations are also performed with three distinctive projectiles of the same mass and impact energy. © 2013 The Author(s).