REVIEW Open Access Recent advancements in mechanical characterisation of 3D woven composites Mohamed Nasr Saleh 1* and Constantinos Soutis 2 Abstract Three dimensional (3D) woven composites have attracted the interest of academia and industry thanks to their damage tolerance characteristics and automated fabric manufacturing. Although much research has been conducted to investigate their out-of-plane “through thickness” properties, still their in-plane properties are not fully understood and rely on extensive experimentation. To date, the literature lacks an inclusive summary of the mechanical characterisation for 3D woven composites. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the available research studies on 3D woven composites mechanical characterisation, with less emphasis on the out- of-plane response, but an in-depth review of the in-plane response “un-notched vs. notched”. The paper highlights the knowledge gap in the literature of 3D woven composites, suggesting opportunities for future research in this field and a room for improvement in utilising Non-Destructive Techniques (NDT), such as Digital Image Correlation (DIC), Acoustic Emission (AE) and X-ray Computed Tomography (CT), for observing damage initiation and evolution in 3D woven composites that could be used to calibrate and evaluate analytical and numerical models. Keywords: 3D textile composites, Mechanical properties, Damage mechanics Introduction Two-dimensional (2D) laminated composites are charac- terised by their in-plane high specific stiffness and strength (Ansar et al. 2011). However, many real life applications are exposed to out-of-plane loading condi- tions that make it impossible to resort to the 2D laminates as the proper solution. Wind turbine blades, stringers and stiffeners in aircraft, pressure vessels and construction ap- plications are some examples of applications in which out- of-plane loading conditions are imposed on the structure. Thus, the need for composite materials with enhanced through-thickness “out-of-plane” properties has emerged. This need requires replacing 2D laminated composites with three-dimensional (3D) textile structures in which binding/stitching yarns are introduced in the z-direction. The “enhanced out-of-plane properties” is not the only advantage of 3D composites. The delamination resistance, due to the use of z-binders, enhances the impact perform- ance and damage tolerance of such material systems (Mcclain et al. 2012). In addition, using textile technology can be utilised to manufacture near-net-shape preforms which reduces the manufacturing/machining cost and time even further. Although various techniques exist for manufacturing 3D textile preforms such as stitching, braiding, weaving and knitting, the most widely used now- adays is weaving due to its high production rate along with the ability to produce various 3D woven structures (Ansar et al. 2011). Generally, 3D woven composites can be divided into two main groups depending on how deep the binder penetrates through the fabric. If it penetrates all the way through the thickness it is referred to as through-thickness (TT) inter- lock (see Fig. 1a, c) while it is classified as layer-to-layer (LTL) if the binder only holds adjacent layers (see Fig. 1b). Then this classification is further divided according to the interlacing angle of the structure. The first category is the angle interlock (AI) in which the interlacing angle between the binder and weft yarns can have any value except 90° (Fig. 1c). The second category is a special case of the first one. The orthogonal interlock (ORT) (Fig. 1a) occurs when the interlacing angle between the binder and weft yarns is equal to 90° (Ansar et al. 2011). The weave pattern used during the weaving process can also affect the classification of 3D woven composites. For * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing, University of Sheffield, S60 5TZ, Rotherham, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Saleh and Soutis Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Modern Processes (2017) 3:12 DOI 10.1186/s40759-017-0027-z
Recent advancements in mechanical characterisation of 3D woven composites
Jun 16, 2023
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