Complex shape forming of a flax woven fabric; analysis of the tow buckling and misalignment defect

Pierre Ouagne (1) , Damien Soulat (2) , Julien Moothoo (1) , Emilie Capelle (1, 3) , Sébastien Guéret (3)

1 PRISME - Laboratoire pluridisciplinaire de recherche en ingénierie des systèmes, mécanique et énergétique
2 GEMTEX - Génie et Matériaux Textiles
3 GROUPE DEPESTELE

With the view to minimise the impact on the environment and to produce structural parts with a goodproduction-rate/cost-ratio, the sheet forming of woven flax based fabric was investigated in this study. Aflax fibre plain-weave fabric has been used to form a complex tetrahedron shape. This shape is of partic-ular interest as it contains several geometric singularities required by many automotive parts such asdouble or triple curvature and low-curvature edges. Globally, the complex tetrahedron shape wasobtained, but tow buckling (out of plane bending of tows) was observed in specific zones of the shape.The main mechanism at the origin of this defect has been defined. A reduction of the tow buckle sizewas obtained by increasing the membrane tension. The influence of fabric architecture at the mesoscopicand macroscopic scales on the appearance of the tow buckles was demonstrated and discussed. Solutionsto prevent the appearance of this defect based on the design of the fabric architecture at the tow or fabricscales were successfully proposed. As a consequence, when sheet forming of complex shapes is consid-ered, specific fabric architectures should be chosen to prevent the appearance of the buckling defect

Mots clés: Manufacturing/processing; Fabric/textile; Preform; Forming

Domaines: Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

Pierre Ouagne, Damien Soulat, Julien Moothoo, Emilie Capelle, Sébastien Guéret. Complex shape forming of a flax woven fabric; analysis of the tow buckling and misalignment defect. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 2013, 51, pp.1-10. ⟨10.1016/j.compositesa.2013.03.017⟩. ⟨hal-03467735⟩