Research - Automated Preprocessor DYNAFAB

Gaurav Nilakantan

Research— Automated Fabric FE Preprocessors (DYNAFAB)

Creating high quality FE models of textile composites is a manually intensive and laborious process. Each time the geometry, architecture, mesh, or fabric dimensions are changed, the model needs to be set up from scratch. To overcome this, a series of FE preprocessors with easy to use GUIs were developed to rapidly set up FE models of plain weave fabrics and unidirectional composites for use in ballistic impact simulations. The software suite consists of DYNAYarn which can create both straight and crimped yarn models comprised of shell or solid elements, DYNAFab which can create plain weave fabrics and unidirectional composite models with a yarn / tow level architecture comprised of solid elements, and DYNA-HEA which can create multi-scale fabric models (further information on the HEA approach can be obtained from the Publications section). The output of the preprocessor is a complete LS-DYNA keyword inputfile which can be used as-is or imported into other preprocessing software such as Altair Hypermesh® or LS-PrePost®.

The software DYNAFAB will be commercially released in the near future. Please click here to visit the website of Nilakantan Composites, the company that owns and sells DYNAFAB .