Development and characterization of composites consisting of woven fabrics with integrated prismatic shaped cavities

Composites are extensively used in automotive, construction, airplanes, wind turbines etc. because of their good mechanical properties such as high specific stiffness, high specific strength and resistance against fatigue. The main issues with composites are delamination and the manual labour in the production process. If hollow structures like stiffeners need to be manufactured, these problems become even more apparent. As a result, there is a lot of interest in woven fabrics with integrated prismatic shaped cavities for composites as they reduce the manual labour, have a higher resistance against delamination and can lead to special properties and applications. In this work several of these woven fabrics with integrated prismatic shaped cavities are designed and produced in high-tenacity polyester yarns. Then, the possibility to use these fabrics in composites is explored: reproducibility of the production process is assessed and static testing is performed. A reproducible production process is developed and static testing shows promising results.

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