Historical development of geometrical modelling of textiles reinforcements for polymer composites: A review

Abstract

Mechanical behaviour of fibre reinforced polymer composites is geared by the geometrical structure of the textile reinforcements. Consistent permeability, predictable impregnation and even distribution of resin are key factors in reaching targeted mechanical performance, whereas these parameters and others are functions of the geometrical composition. Hence numerous analytical geometrical models have been described in literature covering most of the conventional commonly used weave reinforcements. However, no current model can be broadly generalized to address, for instance, manufacturing deformation of fibres cross-section, periodic variability caused by stitching in 2.5D non-crimp stitched fabrics or arbitrary fibre orientation featuring some recently developed three-dimensional textiles reinforcements. Given that the latter structures can potentially provide more favourable mechanical behaviour in terms of bending stiffness, impact resistance and through-thickness properties, it is worthwhile attempting to adapt the available geometrical modelling concepts so as to address versatile structures. This review aims to trace the physical concepts used for modelling the geometrical structures of textile reinforcements at the mesoscale and compare applicability of various analytical and numerical models to types and geometrical dimensionality of woven textile structures.

Failure study of the woven composite material: 2.5 D carbon fabric/ resin epoxy

“…The analysis of woven fabric lamina requires a description of the architecture geometry of the fabric [20][21][22][23]. The periodicity of woven-fibre composites and the isolation of a repeating woven unit-cell allow the construction of analytical micromechanical model.…”

“…The criteria are extended to three dimensional problems where the maximum stress criteria are used for transverse normal stress component. The failure modes included in Hashin's criteria are six, listed as follows in Equation(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)…”

Hierarchical framework for quantifying multiscale structures of two-dimensional woven carbon fibre-reinforced composites considering geometric variability

“…Three-dimensional (3D) images acquired by X-ray micro focus computed tomography (micro-CT) have been adopted to statistically analyse the internal geometry variability of composites [26], which is an efficient way to obtain the realistic geometric parameters. Furthermore, to construct the geometry structure of mesoscale representative volume element (RVE), one way is to build analytical geometric model usually combined with the parameters measured from images [7,27,28], or numerical method such as FE simulation could be used to predict the deformation process of textile geometry [29], while another way is to reconstruct statistically equivalent spatial geometric parameters based on the statistical information analysed from images, for example using Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm [30,31]. Developing statistical algorithms to characterize the spatial variability of yarns considering not only the mean trends but also the correlation information is essential to perform more accurate numerical simulations to gain the properties of composites.…”

An Experimental and Numerical Study of Three-Dimensional Fatigue Damage in Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers

“…Architecture of textile reinforcements used for composites occupied the introductory part of research through a study of geometrical modelling techniques at the meso-scale. A review article discussing this topic was published in a peer-reviewed journal in October 2014 [18].…”

“…In this chapter, a review of literature was conducted to study conventional and recently developed textile geometrical structures used for polymer reinforcements and their available modelling techniques. A more detailed article discussing this topic was published in a peer-reviewed journal [18]. The objective of this review was to present all available composite reinforcement structures and to highlight difficulties in their geometrical modelling despite their superior potential performance, so as to justify selecting the structural configuration of the material used.…”