Development of Flat Knitted Spacer Fabrics for Composites using Hybrid Yarns and Investigation of Two-dimensional Mechanical Properties

Abstract

Flat knitted spacer fabrics offer a strong potential for complex shape preforms, which could be used to manufacture composites with reduced waste and shorter production times. A reinforced spacer fabric made of individual surface layers and joined with connecting layers shows improved mechanical properties for lightweight applications such as textile-based sandwich preforms. We report the development of different flat knitted spacer fabrics from hybrid yarns consisting of glass filament (GF) and polypropylene (PP) filaments. Moreover, the mechanical properties of these reinforcement yarns and two-dimensional composites manufactured using various knit structures and knitting parameters were also studied. The composite structure with reinforcement yarn in weft direction is found to be the best in this regard.