A rationalized macroscopic failure criterion of composite woven fabrics for airship structures

Composite woven fabrics are increasingly employed in architecture and aerospace for their excellent properties, such as lightweight, high specific strength, large surface area, and satisfactory deployability. The strength behavior is essential for various membrane structures as structural failure is serious. However, an accurate, simplified, and universal failure criterion has not been reported due to the inherent complexities of composite woven fabrics. This paper thus studies the tensile strength behaviors of airship fabrics and proposes a rationalized macroscopic failure criterion (Chen-Chen criterion) based on theoretical analysis and experimental observations. The generalized Chen-Chen criterion inherently satisfies the conditions of symmetry, dimensionless, and uniaxial tensile strength (UTS) boundary, with a maximum absolute deviation of only 1.34 % for two airship fabrics. Additionally, the UTS-based criteria were derived particularly for flexible plain-weave polyesters to avoid laborious and costly biaxial strength tests. The average deviations of constant and linear Chen-Chen criteria are 6.01 %, 4.91 %, while that of the Norris criterion reaches 13.34 %. Furthermore, the numerical implementation of the Chen-Chen criterion was demonstrated by biaxial tensile simulations. The failure strength and location predicted by the numerical analysis show good consistency with the experimental results.