Experimental and Modeling Study on Tension Characteristics of a 2.5D Woven Composites

Abstract

Abstract 2.5D woven composites have recently attracted much attention in the fields of aerospace and automobile industry due to their excellent properties such as low density, high thermal shock resistance, high specific strength and enhanced mechanical properties. Before the 2.5D woven composites are applied as load-bearing structure, it is necessary to have an in-depth understanding of their mechanical behavior and load transfer mechanism under external loads. In this paper, in-plane tensile tests including longitude direction and transverse direction were conducted for a 2.5D woven SiO2f/SiO2 composites at room temperature. With the full-field displacements and strains retrieved by digital image correlation (DIC) method, the mechanical properties and deformation features of the 2.5D woven composites were obtained and observed. The results show that the composite has a lower elastic modulus and fracture strength in the weft direction, and the warp yarn has weaker mechanical properties than weft yarn in the loading direction due to its crimp feature. Remarkable deformation features of the full-field displacement and strain distributions were observed, indicating that the woven structure has a great influence on the deformation evolution and load-bearing mechanism of the composite. Also, based on the actual geometrical architecture of the composite, a mesoscale finite element (FE) model was established and the deformation characteristics of the material were analyzed. The crimp of the warp yarns causes the local fiber axis to rotate with respect to the global coordinate system, which causes the effective modulus in the global direction to vary. Local coordinate systems were assigned to each node such that the local 1 direction is always parallel to the local fiber axis along the length of the warp yarns, which improves the accuracy of the simulation results. Deformation features of the 2.5D woven SiO2f/SiO2 composites were obtained in FEM simulation and discussed comparing with experimental results.