Analysis of large displacements/small strains of enhanced 3D beam with section changes

Modeling fabric process at the mesoscopic (i.e. the yarn) scale can be able to give realistic fabric shape predictions. For that, we proposed a new 3D beam element with section changes while breaking from classical beam hypothesis, which can describe the compression and shape change of the yarn. However, the results presented previously are only the first step of a more ambitious work. Indeed, the final goal is to use those elements to model yarns in a textile composite preform. For that purpose, the present paper aims to carry out validation for large displacements and small strains. A nonlinear theory of deformation is based on the updated Lagrangian method. The work employs small strain theory on each element like the co-rotational technique, and only the unit vectors of the cross-sections are employed instead of the full three-dimensional rotational vectors or angles. Finally, a set of numerical examples show that the enhanced 3D element provides an excellent numerical performance under large displace...