Cellular Fabric Design with a Sandwich Structure with a Honeycomb Weave for Composite Materials

Summary

Three dimensional (so-called honeycomb) stuructures based on a cellular hexagonal repeat unit are extensively used in modern aircraft in floor panels and using sections manufactured by companies such as Ciba Geigy (1978) and Hexcel (1978). These stuructures are fabricated from crimped non woven fabrics bonded into three dimensional arrays. Bonding points are areas of weakness which can delaminate.

For this reason a usefull devolopment would be to create on integral cellular woven fabric desirable charasteristics, in particular stifness and tensile strength coupled with a low weight.

The cellular fabrics which have a sandwich structure with a honeycomb weave and covered with a plain weave on top and bottom were designed for composite material applications. Several of the parameters including the size of the honeycomb weave, the warp and weft sets and relationship between the honeycomb weave and the face and back plain weaves which affect fabric thickness will be discussed in this paper.

Glass fibre which was used here is the commenest fibre used in modern composites; and much cheaper than carbon, aramid or ceramic fibres. For this reason the fabric was designed by using glass fibre for impregnation in resin to manufacture a high performance composite. The advantage of the composite materials includes high strength, low weight, ease of fabrication, an ability to consolidate several parts into one.

The honeycomb weave used would give a cellular structure and the plain weaves would give a smooth surface to each side.This fabric is intended to be used in some specific places such as aircraft interior panels (floor panels, wing section), sound attenuation panels, protective enclosures for thermal insulation, to replace metals which are expensive to fabricate and much havier.

This paper was first published on the earlier Egytex website. The text above is the summary that was published there.