ADVANCEMENTS IN DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF 3-D BRAIDED PREFORMS FOR COMPLEX COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

摘要

Commercial success of 3-D braiding technology highly depends on the availability of automated, high production speed, industrial scale machines, which should be robust, affordable, and enable manufacturing of complex, sufficiently large cross section preforms. Recent advancements in design and manufacture of 3-D braided products made on 3TEX's 3-D rotary braiding machines are described in this paper. The developed computerized patterns of the rotary 3-D braiding processes for specific applications enable to predict and optimize desirable shapes and geometric parameters of the preforms, volume fractions of braided and axial fibers, and their distribution among different reinforcement directions. Two specific groups of products are in the focus of this paper: large cross section integral carbon fiber Hat-stiffeners primarily aimed at aircraft applications, and carbon or glass fiber truss-like integral structures for potential aerospace, marine and civil engineering applications. The first group of products demonstrates continuous fiber reinforcement throughout the Hat-stiffener preform, with no "noodle regions" or other sites vulnerable to premature failure. The second group of products demonstrates new capabilities of 3-D braiding to provide integral ultra-light-weight cylindrical and flat truss preforms with different cell geometry. The fabrication approaches used for consolidation of both groups of novel 3-D braided composites and some of their basic characteristics are described in the paper.