Approximation of Mechanical Properties of Sheared Fabrics

In the last several decades an increase of fiber reinforced plastics as material for structural parts can be observed. For a designer of composites the control of fiber content and fiber placement is therefore becoming more important. With software programs fiber placement can be predicted and used in several fields. One of those fields is the estimation of the mechanical properties of the composite structure. Especially in translating the fabric properties given by suppliers of these materials to FE based programs, assumptions with respect to undulation and shearing need to be made. By using realistic and more or less average values as found in literature for the Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus perpendicular to UD fiber directions it is possible to predict a reasonable set of mechanical properties for sheared fabrics.