Abstract
For industrial applications such as construction, sports or aviation the interest in novel 3D woven structures grows. Current production routes have typical downsides such as low production speed, need for dedicated looms for weaving one specific fabric type or time consuming modifications to the weaving loom. In contrast, the present research shows the production of different 3D woven fabrics in one run, at industrial speed on a weaving loom with minor adaptations. A wide range of 3D woven fabrics with integrated prismatic shaped cavities is produced. Moreover, switching from one fabric type to another is fast and feasible using the same loom. These novel 3D fabrics can be divided in three categories depending on the internal connection structure, i.e. hexagonal (type I), rectangular (type II) or X-shaped (type III). All novel weaving patterns are developed for high tenacity (HT) polyester and are characterised with tensile tests, showing promising results. In addition several structures based on aramid and glass yarns are produced, aiming towards lightweight composite materials. The high ductility of the HT-polyester fabrics is of interest for example in shock absorbing applications. Two applications, reinforced concrete beams and lightweight foam composite panels, are illustrated and indeed show excellent ductile properties.
Highlights
3D textile structures are looked upon to create a better multi-axial structural performance which would allow for improving the mechanical properties in many applications such as lattice structures, spacer composites, 3D composites, etc. [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Besides being able to weave different types of 3D fabrics, it is possible to increase the number of cavities within one type
The results show that filling the cavities in the 3D fabrics with a low-density foam results in great improvements in the compressive properties of the panels
Summary
Besides the additional processing steps required, the resulting 3D structure is inherently still governed by the 2D nature of the underlying fabrics as the different layers are not as well connected as in a truly 3D textile product. The post-addition of out-of-plane connections typically damages the fibres, distorts the yarn placement and negatively affects the mechanical properties of the resulting 3D structure. Solid 3D structures are reported by for example 3Tex [16] and Aerospatiale As these fabrics are not hollow they fall outside the scope of this research. Another category of 3D fabrics is a spacer fabric (Parabeam material) but within this fabric the connections are made with lose pile yarns and not with woven layers [17]
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