Strength Analysis of Seamless Double Layered Fabric Using FEM

The seamless double layer fabrics are of special uses in industry. The strength of these fabrics is an important parameter due to different forces pushed on them. In the areas where there is a seam, the fabric has the lowest strength in comparison to other parts and this is the key point that shows the reasons of the importance of strength of the seam in the industrial double layer fabrics. Present research provides a new method that increases the strength of the seam in double layer fabrics by shuttle less weaving machines. In this method, two layers of fabrics are joined each other during weaving, a hole is created in the joint of the two layers and the hole is filled by fillers with circular cross section. In fact, fillers with different diameters are employed for this purpose. The fillers with smaller diameters than the hole are used as half fillers and those with larger diameter are used as the full or complete fillers. The strength of these samples are then compared with those with holes and without fillers, two layer samples without hole (joined through the two layers), the sewed two layer samples and single layer fabrics. The results of finite element modeling indicate that the tensile strength of the seam increases by adding fillers to the holes and increasing their diameters. Moreover, it is showed that, increasing of diameter of the hole does not affect the tensile strength of the seam for the samples filled with complete fillers.