Auxetic fibrous structures and their composites: A review

Abstract

Auxetic textiles are intriguing materials with unusual capabilities. These materials exhibit negative Poisson’s ratio with extraordinary performance in toughness, resilience, shear resistance, and acoustic properties mainly due to their special structure and associated deformation mechanics. Auxetic materials can also have applications around energy absorption, and they can effectively be used for vibration damping and shock absorbency. The exceptional behavior of auxetic textiles can be obtained by utilizing specific fibrous materials and introducing auxetic geometry and structures differently during weaving, knitting, and nonwoven manufacturing. This review highlights the fundamental aspects of various auxetic structures and their properties in general and a detailed analysis of auxetic textile structures and composites, their manufacturing processes, characterization, and applications. These materials have the potential to revolutionize their applications in sports, automotive, construction industry, biomedical engineering, aerospace, marine, and defense personal protective equipment. Fundamental understanding of auxetic geometry, followed by developing and analyzing these geometries by analytical and computational modeling, translating the geometry into appropriate textile structures for actual fabric production, characterization of auxetic fabrics and their composites, and finally some innovative applications in technical textiles are some of the fascinating issues addressed in this review.