Mechanical Properties of Knitted Fabric Composites

Abstract

Knitted fabric in this study is one of the textile fabrics that has been mainly used as reinforcements for applications of large scale composite structures in the United States. The structure of the knitted fabric is that unidirectional fiber bundles are orientated in multi-direction and linked with knitted yam. Therefore, the knitted fabric has good mechanical properties due to no crimps of fiber bundle and excellent drapability and so on. Their superior points can reduce the volume of stacking in a molding and cost of fabrication. In this paper, tensile test, three points bending test and plate-bending test were performed on the knitted fabric composites to investigate basic mechanical properties. In addition, tensile test of wet-on-wet adhesive joint was carried out to investigate for the mechanical properties of large scale composite structure. In all the tests, the knitted fabric was compared with a roving cloth composite because it is a common reinforcement of large scale composite structure.