Triaxially Woven Fabrics: Their Structure and Properties

Abstract

A loom developed for producing small samples of triaxially woven fabrics was used to weave experimental amounts of fabric from coarse string, from 3-ply, 840-den nylon yarn and from graphite yarn. The shedding and warp yarn indexing motions are controlled by a series of cams mounted on a cam roll. The sequence of cams can be changed to produce various weave patterns; changes in weave pattern can also be produced for any particular cam roll by varying the sequence of shedding and indexing motions. The nylon triaxial fabric and a range of square orthogonal fabrics woven from the same yarn were evaluated for various structural and mechanical properties. The stability of the triaxial fabric is much greater than that of an orthogonal fabric with the same percent open area. The triaxial fabric exhibits greater isotropy in its bending behavior and a greater shear resistance than a comparable orthogonal fabric.