Effective elastic constants of wire mesh material studied by theoretical and finite element methods

Wire mesh is a high strength/stiffness material with versatility and little defect. This paper proposed a theoretical model to calculate the anisotropic effective elastic constants of a wire mesh material, and finite element method (FEM) is also carried out to validate the proposed model. Considering the effect of wire waviness and the discontinuity between the warp and weft wires, the analytic expressions of effective elastic modulus, shear modulus and Poisson's ratio were obtained. The results show a good agreement between the theoretical and FEM, revealing that the theoretical method gives a reliable prediction. The in-plane effective elastic modulus is higher about one order of magnitude than the out-of-plane modulus. Conversely, the out-of-plane shear properties are superior to the in-plane properties. The effective modulus are significantly affected by wire radius R, opening length L and the ratio R/L. With the increase of R/L, the effective modulus of variant directions increases with different modalities. The wire waviness leads to much more in-plane stiffness-knockdown of wire mesh with thicker wires. Meanwhile, the out-of-plane stiffness is found to be weakened by the tiny contact area between the warp and weft wires. Stiffness reduction factors were proposed to describe the in-plane and out-of-plane stiffness-knockdown.