The method of cells and the mechanical properties of textile composites

The method of cells has been gaining ground as a method for predicting the elastic properties of textile reinforced composite materials. This method deals away with the constant stress/strain assumption present in most analytical models allowing for a more accurate prediction of the elastic properties, with computational cost only a fraction in comparison with finite element analysis. A new implementation is presented here, which links this method to a mechanistic predictive geometry preprocessor allowing the presented model to deal with 2D and 3D textile reinforced composites. Numerical results for prediction of stiffness and strength of textile composites are generated and compared to other methods. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.