Systematic deformation model of a square guide bar array in a flexible oriented 3D woven process

Abstract

In a comparison with two-dimensional (2D) composites, three-dimensional (3D) composites have attracted large interest in the high-tech field. This is mainly attributed to their superior out-of-plane mechanical properties. The flexible oriented 3D woven technology is an emerging technology for manufacturing 3D composite preforms with complicated architectures. However, the forming process is obviously interfered by the deformation of the guide bar array (GBA). A novel systematic deformation model of the GBA has, in the present paper, been developed for the description of the deformation behavior during fabrication of the 3D orthogonal and 2.5D composite preforms. A coupling of the weaving and GBA construction parameters was also considered in the proposed model. The results show that the experimental and theoretic deformation characteristics match well, with a difference less than 11%, which is an indication of an effective systematic deformation model. This investigation has both contributed to the reduction of computational efforts and the optimization of the flexible oriented 3D woven process.