Computational Modeling of Functional Clothing: Applied Mechanics of Textiles at the University of Iowa

In many circumstances, clothing adversely impacts human performance while also providing protection from exposure to a wide spectrum of external hazards. Our research objective is to realistically describe clothing with computational models and to then exercise these models to realistically predict how different types of clothing (of varying fabrics, cut, and fit) impact human performance when engaging in physical tasks such as running, climbing, walking, etc. With a knowledge of how clothing impacts human performance, the clothing can be re-designed to improve performance. This research combines many long-standing issues in solid mechanics such as the following:

• modeling of very flexible systems (clothing) as shells and membranes at arbitrarily large deformations;
• contact modeling between clothing and the human, and self-contact between portions of the same garment;
• developing suitable constitutive models that account for the fibers comprising the fabric, and their evolving woven or knitted structure in the garment;

The third issue is especially challenging since the yarns slide (irreversibly) relative to one another under deformation of the fabric, and this needs to be captured in fabric constitutive models, since it impacts the incremental stiffness response of the fabric (Fig. 1).