Abstract
The inherent flexibility of fabrics makes them a very suitable construction for lightweight adaptable structures.This paper focuses on the experimental verification of a kinematic fabric prototype by comparing the experimental force and strain results to the predictions made by numerical model utilizing a linear elastic orthotropic material model.The conducted comparison showed large differences in absolute values for both forces and strains. However, the general behaviour of the prototype was approximated quite well and most deviations could be attributed to the numerical model not taking into account the compensation applied to the fabric nor the permanent deformation of the boundary belts.Further research on this topic will focus on modelling the prototype using more advanced material models attempting to increase the accuracy of the numerical predictions. However, the research presented in this paper already shows that even simple analysis methods can be used to design kinematic fabric structures to some extent.
