Design and Manufacture of Textile Composites

A C Long

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781855737440
• eBook ISBN: 9781845690823
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Materials Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The term 'textile composites' is often used to describe a rather narrow range of materials, based on three-dimensional reinforcements produced using specialist equipment. In Design and manufacture of textile composites, however, the term is used to describe the broad range of polymer composite materials with textile reinforcements, from woven and non-crimp commodity fabrics to three dimensional textiles.Whilst attention is given to modelling of textile structures, composites manufacturing methods and subsequent component performance, it is substantially a practical book, intended to help all those developing new products with textile composites. Chapters on modelling include material models and data of use to both researchers and manufacturers, along with case studies for real components. Chapters on manufacturing describe both current processing technologies and emerging areas, and give practical processing guidelines. The last section contains a number of chapters covering applications from a broad range of areas, including transportation, sporting construction and medical applications. As well as illustrating typical components in each area, associated design methodologies and interactions between processing and performance are covered.Design and manufacture of textile composites is an invaluable guide for manufacturers of polymer composite components, end-users and designers, researchers in the fields of structural materials and technical textiles and textile manufacturers. It will also provide manufacturers of traditional textiles with new areas to investigate and potential markets. - Covers a broad range of polymer composite materials with textile reinforcements - Edited by a leading authority in the field with contributions from a worldwide team of authors

1

Manufacturing and internal geometry of textiles

S LOMOV and I VERPOEST, Katholieke Universiteit Leuren, Belgium and F ROBITAILLE, University of Ottawa, Canada

Publisher Summary

A feature of textiles is that they are fibrous materials. Fibers are assembled into yarns and fibrous plies, and then into textiles. The second important feature of textiles is their hierarchical nature. Textiles are structured materials. On a given hierarchical level, one can think of a textile object as an entity and make abstraction of its internal structure: a yarn may be represented as a flexible rod or a woven fabric as a membrane. This approach is useful but the internal structure must be considered if one wishes to assess basic features and behavior of textile objects, such as the transverse compression of yarns or shear behavior of fabrics. The diversity of textile technologies results in a large variety of available textile structures. This chapter discusses the textile structures that are widely used as reinforcements for composites. The properties of a fabric are the properties of fibers transformed by the textile structure. The latter is introduced deliberately during manufacturing. Modern fibers turn millennium-old textile technologies into powerful tools for creating materials designed for specific purposes, where fiber positions are optimized for each application. The chapter focuses on two important topics: textile manufacturing methods and internal structure.

1.1 Hierarchy of textile materials

Textiles technologies have evolved over millennia and the term ‘textile’ now has a very broad meaning. Originally reserved for woven fabrics, the term now applies to fibres, filaments and yarns, natural or synthetic, and most products derived from them. This includes threads, cords, ropes and braids; woven, knitted and non-woven fabrics; hosiery, knitwear and garments; household textiles, textile furnishing and upholstery; carpets and other fibre-based floor coverings; industrial textiles, geotextiles and medical textiles.

This definition introduces three important notions. First, it states that textiles are fibrous materials. A fibre is defined as textile raw material, generally characterised by flexibility, fineness and high ratio of length to thickness; this is usually greater than 100. The diameter of fibres used in textile reinforcements for composites (glass, carbon, aramid, polypropylene, flax, etc.) varies from 5 μm to 50 μm. Continuous fibres are called filaments. Fibres of finite length are called short, discontinuous, staple or chopped with lengths from a few millimetres to a few centimetres.

Fibres are assembled into yarns and fibrous plies, and then into textiles. The second important feature of textiles is their hierarchical nature. One can distinguish three hierarchical levels and associated scales: (1) fibres at the microscopic scale; (2) yarns, repeating unit cells and plies at the mesoscopic scale; and (3) fabrics at the macroscopic scale. Each scale is characterised by a characteristic length, say 0.01 mm for fibre diameters, 0.5–10 mm for yarn diameters and repeating unit cells, and 1–10 m and above for textiles and textile structures. Each level is also characterised by dimensionality where ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Related titles from Woodhead’s textile technology list:
• Copyright
• Contributor contact details
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Manufacturing and internal geometry of textiles
• Chapter 2: Mechanical analysis of textiles
• Chapter 3: Rheological behaviour of pre-impregnated textile composites
• Chapter 4: Forming textile composites
• Chapter 5: Manufacturing with thermosets
• Chapter 6: Composites manufacturing – thermoplastics
• Chapter 7: Modeling, optimization and control of resin flow during manufacturing of textile composites with liquid molding
• Chapter 8: Mechanical properties of textile composites
• Chapter 9: Flammability and fire resistance of composites
• Chapter 10: Cost analysis
• Chapter 11: Aerospace applications
• Chapter 12: Applications of textile composites in the construction industry
• Chapter 13: Textile reinforced composites in medicine
• Chapter 14: Textile composites in sports products
• Glossary
• Index