Theoretical and experimental characterization of a FEM element assembly for the simulation of very compliant knitted mesh

The paper deals with the description, development and validation of an equivalent FEM element assembly suitable for the simulation of very compliant knitted meshes, like those used in elastic coatings, deployable antennas, medical applications and similar. The assembly is based on a network of lumped springs able to reproduce the orthotropic behaviour of the mesh when stretched along two directions. The parameters of the model have been identified by experimental tests using a dedicated biaxial testing device. The effectiveness of the modelling technique has been validated under two test settings, providing in-plane or out-of-plane displacements. For deformations up to 50%, the differences observed between experiments and numerical results are bounded below 6%. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.