Abstract
The development of 3D weaves has resulted in the ability to produce near net shaped preforms, with the additional advantage over unidirectional lay-ups and 2D weaves of greater delamination resistance provided by through-thickness reinforcement. 3D weaving can allow the post-weave formation of bifurcations to form the web and flange of structural components. The mechanical properties of 3D woven components are highly dependent on the weave architecture, allowing the mechanical performance of the component to be tailored to its specific application. Given the number of design parameters to be varied, the design space is potentially infinite. This work focuses on the development of methods to find the optimum weave geometry of a unit cell based on the numerical evaluation of objective functions. This work demonstrates the development of methods to optimise 3D woven textile geometry, using the University of Nottingham’s open-source software TexGen [1] to automatically generate each weave based on the input from a global optimisation algorithm. Methods of varying a number of the parameters will be reported alongside their geometric and physical constraints. Finally, the facility to automatically generate a wide range of weaves, with the ability to vary parameters as desired for input either directly into an optimisation algorithm or for further pre-processing is demonstrated.
Highlights
T and I joint beams are typically used in the aerospace industry as skin stiffeners, spar to skin joints and bulkhead joints
The development of 3D weaves has resulted in the ability to produce near net shaped preforms, with the additional advantage over unidirectional lay-ups and 2D weaves of greater delamination resistance provided by through-thickness reinforcement. 3D weaving can allow the post-weave formation of bifurcations to form the web and flange of structural components
The mechanical properties of 3D woven components are highly dependent on the weave architecture, allowing the mechanical performance of the component to be tailored to its specific application
Summary
T and I joint beams are typically used in the aerospace industry as skin stiffeners, spar to skin joints and bulkhead joints. Typical in-service loading conditions include tensile and flexural loads [2,3,4]. These present conventional composite laminates with the problem of increased risk of delamination between the plies. It has been shown that composite 3D weaves have the advantage over laminates of greater through the thickness reinforcement which leads to greater impact resistance [5] and delamination properties [6]. Reduced fibre damage and crimp during the manufacturing process is an additional advantage of 3D weaving over z-pinning and stitching methods. Some parameters that can be varied include the number of layers, the path of the reinforcing z-binders and the yarn cross-sections
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