ABSTRACT

Textile fabrics designed for composites that are meant for complex loadbearing functions, such as in aerospace and marine applications, can be required to exhibit functional elements in multiple directions. In this sense and restricting to behavior in a two-dimensional plane, a biaxial woven fabric being orthotropic exhibits poor functionality in bias directions. The same is true for a Raschel-knitted fabric incorporating warp and weft inlays. A braided fabric, on the other hand, fares better in the bias direction but is ill equipped to handle strains in principal directions. On the other hand, many nonwovens made up of randomly oriented constituent elements enjoy a degree of isotropicity. However, conventional products of all four fabricformation systems are invariably planar sheets, and in spite of having, on occasion, perceptible thickness, none exhibits a functional element in the third direction. And indeed even if such planar sheets are joined one on top of the other, as in the lamination process, the functional elements in the third direction would still be missing.