Investigation into the effects of inter-ply sliding during double diaphragm forming for multi-layered biaxial non-crimp fabrics

Yu, F.; Chen, S.; Harper, L. T.; Warrior, N. A.

Abstract

The effect of inter-ply sliding was investigated for multi-ply Non-Crimp Fabric (NCF) preforms during the Double Diaphragm Forming (DDF) process. A Finite Element (FE) model was employed to investigate the influence of the ply layup sequence and the coefficient of friction between fabric-fabric and fabric-diaphragm interfaces. Simulation results indicate that in-plane fibre compression, caused by dissimilar shear deformation between adjacent plies, can lead to out-of-plane wrinkles, where the wrinkle length is a function of the relative fibre angle at the ply-ply contact interface. The most severe wrinkles occurred when the inter-ply angle was 45° for a multi-ply biaxial NCF preform with a pillar stitch at 45° to the primary yarns. A second parametric study was conducted by incrementally reducing the coefficient of friction at the ply-ply interface. Experiments confirmed that out-of-plane wrinkles are sensitive to the friction resistance between NCF plies and therefore lubricating the fibres can minimise wrinkling defects caused by dissimilar inter-ply deformation.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 14, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Aug 20, 2021
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 1, 2021
• Journal: Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing
• Print ISSN: 1359-835X
• Publisher: Elsevier BV
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 150
• Article Number: 106611
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesa.2021.106611
• Keywords: Mechanics of Materials; Ceramics and Composites
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/6138972