Experimental and numerical investigation of the shear behaviour of infiltrated woven fabrics (original) (raw)

Wet compression moulding (WCM) as a promising alternative to resin transfer moulding (RTM) provides highvolume production potential for continuously fibre reinforced composite components. Lower cycle times are possible due to the parallelisation of the process steps draping, infiltration and curing during moulding. Although experimental and theoretical investigations indicate a strong mutual dependency arising from this parallelisation, no material characterisation setups for textiles infiltrated with low viscous fluids are yet available, which limits a physical-based process understanding and prevents the development of proper simulation tools. Therefore, a modified bias-extension test setup is presented, which enables infiltrated shear characterisation of engineering textiles. Experimental studies on an infiltrated woven fabric reveal both, rateand viscosity-dependent shear behaviour. The process relevance is evaluated on part level within a numerical study by means of FE-forming simulation. Results reveal a significant impact on the global and local shear angle distribution, especially during forming.