Finite element simulation of yarn breakage during knife penetration of woven fabrics, in B.H.V. topping

Stab resistant garments are required for police, soldiers, correction officers and security personnel to prevent injuries from knife stabs or slashes. Textile composite materials have recently received considerable attention for body armour, due to their structural advantages of high specific-strength and high specific-stiffness as well as improved resistance to stabbing. As the penetration processes and fabric architectures are very complex, homogenization techniques are often used to create a simple model to represent fabric properties. The constitutive models commonly describe a woven fabric as a nonlinear material with a standard elastic-plastic response. Although the homogenization methods have been demonstrated to be effective in predicting material properties, and successfully used in modelling the ballistic impact on traditional laminated textile composites [1,2], the simple homogenization techniques cannot be used to effectively study the mechanism of fabric structural failure. In particular, they cannot be used to study the process of knife penetration through woven fabrics, due to the transverse impact of the knife on adjacent fibres and the slide between yarns