Bending Behavior of Plain-Woven Fabric Air Beams: Fluid-Structure Interaction Approach

A swatch of plain-woven fabric was subjected to biaxial tests and its material characterization was performed. The stress-strain relations of the fabric were determined and directly used in finite element models of an air beam, assumed constructed with the same fabric, subjected to inflation and bending events. The structural responses to these events were obtained using the ABAQUS-Explicit[1] finite element solver for a range of pressures including those considered typical in safe operations of air inflated structures. The models accounted for the fluid-structure interactions between the air and the fabric. The air was treated as a compressible fluid in accordance with the Ideal Gas Law and was subjected to adiabatic constraints during bending. The fabric was represented with membrane elements and several constitutive cases including linear elasticity and hyperelasticity were studied. The bending behavior for each constitutive case is presented and discussions for their use and limitations follow.