Textile reinforcement structure plays an important role in the reinforcement/composite performances during the composite manufacturing and in-service life of the composite material. Structures with a three-dimensional (3D) fiber topology are desired due to their superior multiaxial performance and efforts have been made to modify 2D textile technologies to produce complex 3D shapes. Most of these 3D solutions are based on the principle of adding out-of-plane reinforcements to a planar 2D fabric. Well-established 3D textile methods such as braiding and knitting have also been demonstrated to directly produce near net-shape structures. To understand these potentialities, the first section of this chapter will present the several textile technologies with strengths and weaknesses of these processes to manufacture technical reinforcements for composite applications. In the following sections, several applications with specific textile architectures will be given, in particular, the applications of the through-the-thickness reinforcement and 3D textile ply during the composite manufacturing.
Part of the book: Textiles for Advanced Applications