Permeability Customisation through Preform Manipulation Utilising 3D-Printing Technology

Abstract

The importance of preforming techniques is constantly increasing due to the fast development of liquid composite moulding processes. Besides traditional preforming methods such as tufting and stitching, tackifier based methods have developed rapidly. This paper presents a new methodology utilising 3D-printer technology for fabrics, through preform manipulation and thus enabling in-plane permeability property customisation. Two patterns of 45° and 90° with respect to the predominant permeability direction were printed onto the fabric consisting of parallel thermoplastic polymer melt strands. After a hot pressing stage the resulting preforms were characterised in terms of their in-plane permeabilities with an optical permeameter and compared to the original material's permeabilities. Furthermore a parameterised model is proposed describing the phenomena causing the manipulation by introducing a scale matrix for translating the original material's permeabilities into the permeabilities of the manipulated preforms.