A Multiscale Homogenization Approach for Architectured Knitted Textiles

As a type of architectured material, knitted textiles exhibit global mechanical behavior which is affected by their microstructure defined at the scale at which yarns are arranged topologically given the type of textile manufactured. To relate local geometrical, interfacial, material, kinematic and kinetic properties to global mechanical behavior, a first-order, twoscale homogenization scheme was developed and applied in this investigation. In this approach, the equivalent stress at the far field and the consistent material stiffness are explicitly derived from the microstructure. In addition, the macrofield is linked to the microstructural properties by a user subroutine which can compute stresses and stiffness in a looped finite element (FE) code. This multiscale homogenization scheme is computationally efficient and capable of predicting the mechanical behavior at the macroscopic level while accounting directly for the deformation-induced evolution of the underlying microstructure.