Elastic property prediction of the stitched multi-axial warp knit fabric composites

In order to improve the resistances to delamination, damage tolerance, some in-plane and out-of-plane properties of composite materials, a through-thickness reinforcement must be provided. This through-thickness reinforcement is achieved by stitching multi-axial warp knit (MWK) fabrics used as preforms for the fabrication of composite materials. The MWK fabrics are constructed with layers of insertion fiber bundles in the warp, weft and bias directions. In order to correlate the microstructure of a preform with the elastic properties of stitched MWK composite, the analytical model for stitched MKW composite is developed. The overall geometry and geometric parameters of a representative volume are determined from the photomicrographs of cross sections of the fabricated composite specimens. The various elastic properties of MWK fabric composites are predicted as functions of various geometric parameters using an averaging method. The experimental results are compared with the predicted results in order to validate the suggested model. It is found that the predicted elastic properties are in reasonably good agreement with the experimental values.