Although it is undeniable that the Poisson's effect on the behavior of a woven fabric is crucial, there have been relatively few papers devoted to this subject. In this study, a mechanical model for a woven fabric made of extensible yarns is developed to calculate the fabric Poisson's ratios. Theoretical results are compared with the available experimental data. A thorough examination on the influences of various mechanical properties of yarns and structural parameters of fabrics on the Poisson's ratios of a woven fabric is given. The prediction of Poisson's ratios in this paper will enable more rigorous studies on such important issues of fabric bending and draping behaviors. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A three- dimensional mesoscopic method is developed for predicting the effective thermal conductivity of multiphase random porous media. The energy transport equations are solved by a lattice Boltzmann method for multiphase conjugate heat transfer through a porous structure whose morphology is characterized by a random generation- growth algorithm. Our numerical results show that the cell number in the third dimension influences the resulting effective thermal conductivity of three- dimensional porous media. The predicted effective thermal conductivity varies with the cell number in the third dimension following an exponential relationship, and it requires in the examples at least 10 cells along the third dimension before the predictions stabilize. Comparisons with the experimental data show that the effective thermal conductivities measured by the hot- probe and hot- wire techniques agree well with the predicted results by the two- dimensional model, whereas those measured by the transient comparative method agree more with the three- dimensional predictions.