Journal of The Textile Institute

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Study of changes in 3D-woven multilayer interlock fabric preforms while forming

Y. Nawab , X. Legrand & V. Koncar
a a b b

Institut de Recherche en Gnie Civil et Mcanique, Universit de Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, France

b

ENSAIT, GEMTEX, Roubaix, France

Available online: 10 Apr 2012

To cite this article: Y. Nawab, X. Legrand & V. Koncar (2012): Study of changes in 3D-woven multilayer interlock fabric preforms while forming, Journal of The Textile Institute, DOI:10.1080/00405000.2012.676267 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00405000.2012.676267

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The Journal of The Textile Institute iFirst, 2012, 17

Study of changes in 3D-woven multilayer interlock fabric preforms while forming

Y. Nawaba*, X. Legrandb and V. Koncarb
a

Institut de Recherche en Gnie Civil et Mcanique, Universit de Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, France; bENSAIT, GEMTEX, Roubaix, France (Received 4 October 2011; nal version received 12 March 2012)

Multilayer woven reinforcements are increasingly employed in the domain of composite materials. Delamination occurrence and resultant failure of a laminated composite piece subjected to high vibrations, is an issue of much concern in aeronautics. The situation becomes more complex in case of bended/curved pieces. In order to improve through the thickness mechanical properties, 3D-woven multilayer interlock fabric is used as composite reinforcement. Structural changes, i.e. thickness change, relative slippage of layers, change in tow aspect ratio and change of orientation of the tows columns, etc. occur in such fabrics during the forming process. These changes may lead to the gradient of the resin amount in composite, internal stresses and variations of mechanical properties in the piece. No signicant research has been conducted on this aspect. Lack of knowledge or neglecting these changes may lead to prejudicial estimations of ultimate mechanical properties and fracture analysis. In the present article, the changes that occurred in 5-layer and 13-layer 3D-woven multilayer interlock fabrics have been studied, when moulded at ve different angles and two different bending radii. A signicant change in thickness, tow aspect ratio, tow orientation and relative layer slippage is observed. Keywords: textile composite; multilayer interlock fabric; mouldability; tow orientation

Introduction Laminated woven composites are widely used in the aeronautical, naval and automotive applications due to their uniform in-plane mechanical and thermophysical properties but their through the thickness properties are poor (Gowayed & Fan, 2001; Miravete, 1999). Delamination of plies occurs under high vibrations, especially, in the aeronautics, resulting into the piece failure. The situation becomes more complex, if such pieces are curved/angled. In order to improve the interlayer fracture resistance, and through the thickness properties of composites, 2D+ or multilayer interlock woven preform are used. Multilayer interlock preforms can be fabricated on modied conventional looms, but for certain 3D-woven fabrics, special machines are required. In order to weave multilayer interlock preforms, weaving is done such that the numbers of threads from different fabric layers are used to bind the layers with each other. Multilayer interlock woven fabrics are categorized into four types (Gu & Zhili, 2002; Sheng & van Hoa, 2003) depending on the orientation of binding threads among the layers, and their penetration depth into the layers. Layer-to-layer binding may have more bre
*Corresponding author. Email: yasir.nawab@univ-nantes.fr
ISSN 0040-5000 print/ISSN 1754-2340 online Copyright 2012 The Textile Institute http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00405000.2012.676267 http://www.tandfonline.com

volume fraction than through the thickness binding. Moreover, angle interlock bound fabrics are more resistant to delamination than orthogonal interlocked fabrics (Potluri & Sagar, 2008; Yi & Ding, 2004). These preforms are impregnated with resin inside a mould to convert them into a composite. The shape and complexity of the composite may vary as there are various numbers of ways, in which a preform may be moulded. There is a real need to understand the moulding process and the ability of a particular woven preform to adopt to the shape of the mould, especially considering the variety of ways in which preforms can be formed. Since there is no standard method to measure mouldability, it has no standard denition. However, some authors described it in the terms of shear rigidity (Chen, Lo, Tayyar, & Day, 2002). It can also be dened as the ability of a preform to adopt to the shape of a mould during the composite formation. When composites are formed from complex multilayer interlock woven reinforcements, certain changes in preform geometry are observed. These changes are directly related to mouldability of the preform. Since a textile material is essentially hierarchical in nature (Lomov, Gusakov, Huysmans, Prodromou, & Verpoest, 2000; Lomov

Y. Nawab et al.

et al., 2001; Long, 2005; Verpoest & Lomov, 2005), the changes that are visible at macro scale are always accompanied by the changes that occur at the lower scales. Thus, these hierarchical changes can be observed at the micro (change in bre/lament distribution), meso (Boisse, Zouari, & Gasser, 2005) (change in tow-aspect ratio) and the macro scales (change in thickness of the preform). These changes depend on thickness of perform, i.e. number of layers, moulding angle, moulding geometry (moulding radius) and tool-part interaction (which sides of the preform are in contact with the mould). These changes certainly affect the mechanical properties of the nal composite piece and should be taken into account while modelling; otherwise they may lead to the prejudicial estimations. Thus, mouldability can be characterized in terms of changes that occur in the preform at micro, meso and macro scale, when it is impregnated to form a composite. In the present study, multilayer woven preforms were moulded at different angles and radiuses and then impregnated in resin in order to x the preform and the tows in the moulded shape. Then they were cut into ne slices, polished and analysed with a microscope to observe the changes in the preform at microscopic, and mesoscopic scale. It was observed that changes that occur at micro and meso scales changes related to lament distribution and tow geometry have direct correlation with the macro scale changes, i.e. angle of bending, and thickness of the preform. Thus identication of the mouldability can be carried out by employing a statistical analysis at the different hierarchical scales of the fabric. It is found that a thick and dense multilayer fabric has a uniform surface as compared to low density and thin fabric. Tow-aspect ratio is an indication of compression on the tow layers. For an angled moulded fabric, tow-aspect ratio of external layers was found greater than the tow-aspect ratio at internal layers. Thickness of the fabric also changes on moulding and its value depends on the moulding angle, moulding radius and the distance from bending point. There is also an interlayer tow slippage, which depends on the coupling of compressive and axial stresses.

Materials and methods Multilayer orthogonal layer-to-layer fabrics with 5- and 13-layers were woven on a purpose-built shuttle weaving machine. Weave design of 5-layer fabric is shown in Figure 1. Weave design of 13-layer fabric can be obtained by extending 5-layer design on the same pattern. Dobby shedding mechanism was installed on the machine for separation of warp threads during weaving. Warp tows were coming directly to the machine from a V-type creel, on which carbon warp bobbins were mounted. Carbon tows of 200 Tex, 6 K in the warp and the glass tows RC14 320 P109 in the weft were used. Reed lling was done so that the warp columns were perpendicular to the weft columns, i.e. for 5-layer fabric, number of tows per dent were kept equal to 4, and for 13-layer fabric, equal to 12. Warp and weft-tow densities of 5-layer fabric were found equal to 16 tows/cm and 14 tows/cm, respectively. In case of the 13-layer fabric, warp and weft densities were found equal to 24 tows/cm, and 130 tows/cm, respectively. Width of the woven fabric in both cases was kept equal to 50 cm. Fabric was cut into samples of 7 1 cm, both in the direction of warp and weft, from different places of the fabric. For the fabric moulding, aluminium moulds bended at angles 0, 45, 90, 135 and 180 were used. The samples were moulded manually at these angles, and at two radii of curvatures: R1 (8 mm) and R2 (12.5 mm). These fabric samples were impregnated with transparent low viscosity epoxy resin in a silicon batch. Objective was to block the fabric in moulded position to observe the changes due to the forming process. Figure 2 shows a moulded (angle 90 and radius 12.5 mm) fabric sample after the curing. The resin used in this study, polymerize at room temperature, and have negligible chemical shrinkage. Therefore,

Figure 1. Weave design of 5-layer multilayer interlock fabric with orthogonal layerlayer binding (Texgen).

Figure 2. A fabric sample (90) moulded at radius 12.5 mm after curing.

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cure-induced changes in the preform, i.e. cure shrinkage and residual deformation, etc. are negligible. In order to avoid any changes due to pressure, resin infusion was done at the atmospheric pressure. So the complete fabric impregnation was only made possible by the low viscosity of resin. The composite pieces were cut in thin slices and then polished by using the polish papers on polishing machine. Final polishing was done on a gold plate Cameo Disk Gold by using diamond liquid. These thin slices were then viewed under Bel photonic microscope for the measurements. For maximum visibility, the images are taken in patches at the same zoom level without displacing the sample, and then combined to get the full image of piece. In order to make the study more precise, regions vertex (C) 1 cm, and vertex (C) 2 cm (Figure 3) were marked on the moulded samples. Straight fabric sample herein designated as 0 was taken as the reference for the changes. Results and discussion In the following sections, results on the measurement of thickness of the fabric, tow-aspect ratios of the layers, interlayer slippage and orientation of the tow columns are presented. Measurements were taken on ve different samples for each thickness, angle and radius to verify the repeatability of the results. Standard deviations of these measurements were also calculated and are shown on their respective graphs. Thickness of the fabric To achieve uniform mechanical characteristics, thickness of the preform should be uniform. Since the fabric is the combination of two groups of wavy structures (warp and weft yarns), resultant fabric structure has troughs and crests (Figure 4). This non-

Figure 4. Weft-wise cross-sectional view of the 5-layer fabric.

uniformity may result in resin-rich areas in the region of troughs at the surface causing poor surface mechanical characteristics compared to laminated composites having relatively uniform tow arrangements. In this study, it was found that the thickness of the multilayer fabrics is not homogeneous. It is maximum at the points of intersection of the warp and weft tows (crest) and minimum at the centre in between them (trough). The difference between maximum and minimum thickness of fabric depends on tow properties, tow density, number of layers in fabric and weave design. For our weave design, a difference of 43% (of minimum thickness) was observed between maximum and minimum thickness of 5-layer fabric, whereas in case of 13-layer fabric it was just 5%. Thus, it can be concluded that high density and thicker fabrics have more uniform preform structure as compared to low density and thinner fabrics. So an extreme care should be taken while selecting multilayer fabric as composite reinforcement. Tow-aspect ratio Aspect ratio of the tows is the ratio of distance between boundaries of tow along major axis to the distance along minor axis. If this ratio is higher, then the tows will be more lenticular. This ratio can also be used as an index of compression on the tows. If a layer is subjected to compression, the aspect ratio of the tows in that layer will be increased, and vice versa. In this study, it is noted that on moulding, the aspect ratio of tows of external layers of fabric is more than the ones of internal layers. It may be concluded that compression of tows at external fabric layers is more than compression of tows at internal layers. This difference may result into gradients of resin penetration through the thickness, internal stresses in piece and unstable nal shape. Figure 5 shows variation of the aspect ratio of layers with moulding angle. Tow-aspect ratio is uniform at all the layers of 0 fabric. However, for angled geometries, it increases with the increasing angle. Therefore, it can be said that compression increases with increasing moulding angle, and reaches the maximum value at 135. It is also found that the

Figure 3. Sample of the polished fabric piece with marks C 1 and C 2 cm.

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18 16
0

Y. Nawab et al.
8
135 R1 90R1 45 R1 180

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 0 30 60 90 120 150 180

Aspect ratio

14 12 10 8
1st outside 2nd 3rd 4th 5th inside

Slippage (%)

Moulding angle (degree)

Fabric layers

Figure 5. Graph showing aspect ratios of layers at different angles.

Figure 6. Distance (centre 1 cm) between the columns of weft on moulding at radius R1 and R2.

compression on the tows is lesser in case of moulding at greater radius of curvature, and vice versa. Interlayer slippage On moulding, the fabric is submitted to the compressive and axial stresses. The layers of fabric slip with respect to each other as fabric structure is not rigid. These stresses are coupled so if compressive stress is greater, there will be no or lesser slippage whereas a greater slippage is observed if axial stresses are greater. On moulding, the distance among the tows (X1) at external layers increases and that at inside (X2) decreases or tends to decrease, due to the axial constraints. The structure of a 5-layer fabric is not very compact. The slippage of tows in this case, can be better understood by dividing the bending/moulding in two phases: 090 and 90180. In rst phase, when the bending angle is increases from 0 to 90, the tows move easily in the beginning thanks to the looseness of the structure. On approaching the 90, tightness of structure increases, and slippage becomes lesser. From 90 to 180, the slippage of the tows depends on the competition between the in-plane (tensile force along fabric surface) and out of plane (compression force perpendicular to fabric surface) components of the bending force (Figure 3 and 9). In the second phase, effective force causes the tows to move in that tight structure until 135, where the compression force becomes maximum (see the aspect ratio at 135 in Figure 5). Further movement of tows (135180) becomes very difcult due to presence of this maximum compressive force. Figure 6 shows the changes in the distance between tows on moulding at radius R1 and in the region centre 1 cm. In case of a 13-layer fabric, there is no signicant movement in phase 1 due to compactness of

structure, but from 90 to 180, the distance at outside increased in the same way as in case of the 5-layer fabric. No signicant change at the inside layers is observed. This is due to fact the tows are very close and did not get space to become closer. For a given thickness, the slippage G is a function of moulding angle h and bending radius R and its value can be found by using second degree regression equation: G 0:281 2:7 102 h 7:2 105 (h 90)2 2:10 102 R 9:26 103 (R 9:6875)2 : In (2) G is the slippage in mm, h is the moulding angle in degrees and R is the radius of moulding in mm. Change in thickness on moulding Thickness of a composite is supposed to change during fabrication due to chemical shrinkage of resin (Li, Potter, Wisnom, & Stringer, 2004) and compactness of bres due to pressure applied. Here, we noted that moulding of multilayer interlock fabric is itself a source of thickness change. On moulding, the thickness of the fabric changes mainly due to the re-arrangement of the tows, interlayer slippage, slippage of the tows within a layer and compression on the tows on moulding. In this study, average of the minimum and maximum thickness of the fabric was taken as reference to calculate changes in thickness on moulding. It is noted that thickness change on moulding is a function of initial thickness T of the piece, bending/ moulding angle h, bending/moulding radius and the distance from the bending point (vertex). When moulded at radius R1 and R2, slight change in thickness from 0 to 45 was observed in case of both 5- and

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Tensile component of bending force

Compressive component of bending force

Vertex/centre column

Orientation angle

Figure 7. Variation of thickness (13 layers) with radius and moulding angle.

Figure 9. Cross-sectional view of 13-layer fabric moulded at 180.

13-layer fabric but afterwards it increased considerably and reached maximum value at 135 as shown in Figure 7. It was also observed that decrease in the aspect ratio of tows, and their redistribution is the main cause of the increase of thickness of 13-layer fabrics. Interlayer slippage was not signicant due to higher density of this fabric. As shown is Figure 7, the thickness of fabric moulded at radius R2 (12.5 mm) is greater than thickness at radius R1 (8 mm). It is due to compression on the tows, which will be lesser in case of radius R2. So it can be concluded that keeping all other factors same, the nal thickness of the moulded fabric is directly proportional to moulding radius. It is also observed that thickness is lesser in the region vertex 1 cm due to more compression in this region as compared to region centre 12 cm. Orientation of the tows Position and orientation of the tows columns in a woven composite piece play a very important role to dene its mechanical characteristics and thickness. In multilayer orthogonal layer-to-layer woven fabric, the yarn columns are perpendicular to each other (Figure 8) but on moulding their position and orientation change with respect to the piece surface (Figure 9). This change in orientation/position affects not only the thickness and aspect ratio but also the mechanical properties.

The new orientation is in more order in case of thick and high-density fabric as compared to thin and lowdensity fabric. Prediction of nal tow position is essential to model the mechanical properties of the composite. Figure 9 shows the 13-layer fabric moulded at 180. It can be noted that the tows column at the vertex/centre of fabric did not change its orientation (a = 90) on moulding but as we go away from the centre, the orientation angle of columns starts decreasing. At a certain distance from the centre, this orientation angle gained minimum value and from that point the columns remained at that orientation for the rest of the length. Consider that a fabric of thickness T is moulded along (outside) a mould of radius R and moulding angle h. Due to greater outer length, the outer layer will displace with respect to inner layer by distance x as shown in Figure 10, and at that point the tows will bend at an angle a with the fabric surface. The tow column at OO being the central column, will not change its position/orientation but the tow column at B at distance L from vertex will change its orientation and will bend at an angle a Figure 10. Displacement x of the tow column depends on bending radius R, fabric thickness T and distances L from centre tow column and can be written as: x L RL=(R T ): (2)

The maximum value of x is denoted by X and found equal to Th/2 where h is the moulding angle in radians. The value of angle of orientation a can be found by using values of thickness, tow displacement x and slippage G by using Equation (3) a tan1 T=(X G): (3)

Figure 8. Cross-sectional view of 13-layer fabric with perpendicular warp and weft columns.

Figure 11 shows the predicted value of angle of orientation of tow columns of a 13-layer fabric

Y. Nawab et al.

studied. It is noted that mouldability-based changes are so signicant that they may have prominent effect on ultimate mechanical properties of the composite and neglecting them while modelling these properties may result into prejudicial calculations. Basic rules were dened for mouldability-based changes, keeping in view the nding of this study. An empirical model was proposed to predict the tow-column orientation in thick and high-density multilayer interlock fabric. The results of this model are found coherent with the experimental data. In this article, only orthogonal layer-to-layer interlock fabrics are studied. Different weave designs, i.e. orthogonal through the thickness, layer-to-layer angle interlock, etc. will certainly affect the compactness/tightness of fabric structure, and the mouldability-based changes in it. Further research is required to fully understand the forming behaviour. A work is already in progress.

Figure 10. Schematic view of fabric moulded at angle h.

10

References
Boisse, P., Zouari, B., & Gasser, A. (2005). A mesoscopic approach for the simulation of woven bre composite forming. Composites Science and Technology, 65(34), 429436. Chen, X., Lo, W.Y., Tayyar, A.E., & Day, R.J. (2002). Mouldability of angle-interlock woven fabrics for technical applications. Textile Research Journal, 72(3), 195200. doi: 10.1177/004051750207200302. Gowayed, Y., & Fan, H. (2001). Fatigue behavior of textile composite materials subjected to tensiontension loads. Polymer Composites, 22(6), 762769. doi: 10.1002/ pc.10578. Gu, H., & Zhili, Z. (2002). Tensile behavior of 3D woven composites by using different fabric structures. Materials & Design, 23(7), 671674. doi: 10.1016/s0261-3069 (02)00053-5. Li, C., Potter, K., Wisnom, M.R., & Stringer, G. (2004). In-situ measurement of chemical shrinkage of MY750 epoxy resin by a novel gravimetric method. Composites Science and Technology, 64(1), 5564. Lomov, S.V., Gusakov, A.V., Huysmans, G., Prodromou, A., & Verpoest, I. (2000). Textile geometry preprocessor for meso-mechanical models of woven composites. Composites Science and Technology, 60(11), 2083 2095. doi: 10.1016/s0266-3538(00)00121-4. Lomov, S.V., Huysmans, G., Luo, Y., Parnas, R.S., Prodromou, A., Verpoest, I., et al. (2001). Textile composites: Modelling strategies. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 32(10), 13791394. Long, A. (2005). Design and manufacture of textile composites. Cambridge: Woodhead. Miravete, A. (1999). 3-D textile reinforcements in composite materials. Cambridge: Woodhead. Potluri, P., & Sagar, T.V. (2008). Compaction modelling of textile preforms for composite structures. Composite Structures, 86(13), 177185. Sheng, S.Z., & van Hoa, S. (2003). Modeling of 3D angle interlock woven fabric composites. Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials, 16(1), 4558. doi: 10.1177/0892705703016001206.

90 Angle of orientation 80 70 60 50 40

Angle of Orientation Error %

-5 Distance 'L' from vertex

Figure 11. Graph of calculated values of angle of orientation a and % error.

(R = 12.5 mm and moulding angle 180) at different distances from the centre/vertex point, calculated by using Equation (3). The percentage of error is the difference of calculated value of the orientation angle from the experimental value and is presented on the same graph. Its value is less than 5%, which is within the acceptable limits. Conclusion In this study, 5- and 13-layers multilayer orthogonal interlock fabrics were studied during moulding at two radiuses, and at ve moulding angles. Changes in the fabric, i.e. change in thickness, interlayer slippage, changes in tow-aspect ratio and in orientation of the tows as a function of moulding angle and radius were

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Verpoest, I., & Lomov, S.V. (2005). Virtual textile composites software wisetex: Integration with micro-mechanical, permeability and structural analysis. Composites Science and Technology, 65(1516), 25632574. doi: 10.1016/j.compscitech.2005.05.031.

Yi, H.L., & Ding, X. (2004). Conventional approach on manufacturing 3D woven preforms used for composites. Journal of Industrial Textiles, 34(1), 3950. doi: 10.1177/1528083704045847.