High‐fidelity modeling of the braiding process for generating the realistic mesostructure of preforms in braided composites

Abstract

Abstract An accurate method for modeling the braided preforms is vital for the mesoscopic performance analysis of tubular composites. This study proposed a high‐fidelity virtual braiding model for the general braiding process, which further considers the fiber‐level deformation of the yarns during the braiding process to generate the realistic mesostructure of preforms in tubular composites. The method uses the digital element approach previously proposed for weaving processes to model the braiding yarn. The whole braiding process, including the deposition zone and convergence zone, is incorporated into the model to account for the effect of interaction in these zones on the preform mesostructure. Two braiding processes were simulated with the proposed virtual braiding method. The simulated geometry of the braided preforms and the yarn paths in the convergence zone agree well with the reported experimental results. To facilitate the performance analysis of braided composite structures, further automated generation of solid cell instances based on the obtained braided preforms was studied. Importantly, this work could reduce the considerable effort required for characterizing the mesostructure via the costly micro‐CT scans for braided composites, and the generated geometry of the braided preform is more precise than the widely used highly idealized models.