Draping behavior

The measuring system is time-efficient and change of drape can be measured and comparisons made within a short time. Stylios et al. [28] developed a new generation of drapemeter which measured the drape of any fabric both statically and dynamically in three dimensions by using a CCD camera as a vision sensor. This system, called the Marlin Monroe Meter (M3), was used to measiue the drape behavior of fabric (without being restricted to small circular fabric specimens) and to verify the theoretical prediction model. The draped profile of the specimen was taken and presented on a computer. 

Drape of woven fabrics induced by gravitational force is influenced by a combination of certain deformation properties and structural characteristics. Stiffness, shear and extension are the relevant measure of deformation, while fabric weight and thickness are the appropriate structural characteristics. The type of woven construction (for example, plain, matt, twill, satin) is also a factor influencing the drape of woven fabric. Many researchers tried to find out the relationship between the fabric drape behaviors with the fabric mechanical properties. A brief of their findings are discussed below. 

Bao et al. [64] investigated the effect of the mechanical properties on the MIT drape behaviors of fabrics by experiment and simulation. An improved MIT drape device enables them to detect the drape shapes of fabrics specimens with higher reproducibility than that of earlier authors. They simulated the large deformation of a fabric sample under drape by a non-linear FEM combined with an incremental method, where the sample is modeled by an elastic thin shell. They observed from the eomputed results that the simulation is valid for the estimation of the real MIT drape properties of fabries, and that the MIT drape eharacteristics of fabrics depend appreciably on the bending rigidity and torsional one but little on the extensional rigidity and shearing one. 

There have been veiy few researchers involved in investigation of dynamic drape behavior of fabric. Yang and Matsudaira [79-82] of Kanazawa University, Japan, discussed various aspects of dynamic drape in a series of papers published in Journal of Textile Machinery Society of Japan. At first the researchers found that there existed an inherent node number for any fabric, and a conventional static drape coefficient Ds for a fabric could be measured by an image analysis system with high accuracy and reproducibility. 

Pattanayak, A. Modeling and Analysis of Drape Behavior of Woven Fabrics under Static and Dynamic Conditions, PhD Thesis, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, 2010 pp 1-208. 

Many researchers are tried to model the complex behavior of fabric drape using finite element analysis. Drape is a characteristic behavior of flexible fabric, so it is difficult to model fabric. They considered the fabric as different models and modeled accordingly. Some of their findings are discussed below. 

Dias et al. [71] presented a computational model for plain woven fabrics which can represent known elastic behavior in deformation such as planar extension, shearing and out-of-plane bending, drape, and buckling. They assumed the fabric to be an orthotropic linear elastic continuum and discretized by a mesh of triangles. Then each triangle links three particles which are capable to measure the stress and strain of the imderlying medium. For the planar deformation, they assume the hypothesis of the plate imder plane stress Irom the classical theory of elasticity. For the out-of-plane deformation, they allow linear elasticity and... 

The draping and motion of the cloth in response to the underlying movement of the wearer may also have to be modeled to fully accoimt for the movement of the sensors because most garments do not fit tightly on the hmnan frame. For the successful simulation of e-textiles, the areas to be encompassed include physical environment, sensor behavior, human body and motion, motion/draping of clothing, manufacturability (weaving and piece work). 

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