A review of fiber-scale modeling for composite preforms

Realistic geometric models of fiber structures are essential for numerical analysis of textile reinforced composites. Micro-structures of textiles are however often complex due to the contact interactions of the fibers and yarns. Textiles are prone to deform during the forming process for their flexible property, which further increases the difficulty of fiber structure modeling. High fidelity and efficiency modeling of the textiles still remains some challenges. Commonly used geometric modeling methods stay at the research on the meso-scale, or yarn level. The fiber-scale modeling method has been developed rapidly in recent years, which is able to generate geometric models very close to the actual textiles. Problems of forming and deformation simulations are also solved by fiber-scale modeling method. This paper gives an overview of the literatures dedicated to the fiber-scale modeling of textiles. Formulations of fiber-scale strategy are introduced, based on which these models are divided into two categories: the digital element approach and the virtual fiber method. Applications of fiber-scale models are summarized, advantage and disadvantage of the existing modeling methods are discussed. Latest developments of fiber-scale modeling technology for improving the modeling accuracy and efficiency are presented.