Manufacturing and Process-based Property Analysis of Textile-Reinforced Thermoplastic Spacer Composites.

Novel woven spacer fabrics based on hybrid yarns are suitable for an efficient fabrication of three-dimensional composite structures in high volume production. In this paper, an innovative manufacturing process with short cycle times and high automatisation is introduced for textile-reinforced thermoplastic spacer structures suited for bending load cases. The different process steps hybrid yarn fabrication, weaving technology for three-dimensional textile preforms and consolidation with unique kinematics and hot pressing technology are described in detail. The bending properties of the manufactured spacer structures are evaluated by means of experiments as well as finite element simulations. Numerical parametric studies are performed in order to validate the influence of manufacturing tolerances on the bending stiffness of the spacer structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]