Effect Of The Interlacing Pattern On The Compaction Behaviour Of 3D Carbon Fibre Textile Reinforcements

3D reinforcements were introduced to mitigate and overcome limitations arising from the use of traditional textile reinforcements in the construction of polymer matrix composites (PMC), in terms of their resistance to impact and inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS), both resulting from delamination.

Many thick interlaced textile structures were developed towards that end but many more possibilities exist in terms of yarn interlacing patterns, leading to different types of 3D textiles that may potentially be built. The effect of different interlacing patterns on the compaction behaviour of such interlaced 3D textiles is probed in this paper. Trends and differences in the compaction behaviour were observed for 5 series of 3 consecutive compaction cycles applied to 16-layers interlaced 3D reinforcements. Those trends and differences are presented and discussed.

Overall, the maximum recorded volume fraction ranged from 0.58 to 0.86. Values of the volume fraction reached in the first cycle C1 were always lower than in following cycles C2 and C3. Although some elements of behaviour were common to all samples and tests, differences also emerged between samples featuring different interlacing patterns.