Computer-assisted Structural Design of Industrial Woven Fabrics Part II: System Operation, Heuristic Design

Abstract

This is the second of a three-part series describing an attempt to develop a comprehensive computational framework for aiding the engineering design of woven industrial fabrics. The work has two major aims. The first, covered in Parts I and II, is to develop a generalized knowledge-based CAD system for fabrics design. The second is a detailed analytic phase comprising a set of computational models for simulation of fabric behavior under external stimuli, and predictive estimation of some important properties. Part III presents the first of these models, and analyses the uniaxial/biaxial load-deformation of a plain woven fabric. While the system architecture and functional description were presented in Part I, Part II details the working principles of the knowledge-based Design Phaseof the CAD system, considered as two major software sub-systems. The first sub-system is the ‘Revision Stage’, which essentially supports the designer's attempt to revise a previously successful but slightly different fabric design to meet current performance requirements. The second sub-system (and probably the most interesting in a theoretical sense) is the ‘Synthesis Stage’, which helps the engineer develop a fabric design from first principles.