Multiscale experimental and numerical characterisation of textile reinforcements for enhanced nano-interleaved composites

The unique combination of light and flexible, but strong structures, makes textile materials well suited for technical engineering applications. Especially, fibre reinforced composites are seeing a tremendous growth for designing light-weight structural components. The fibres, the building blocks of any textile, and their arrangement in the composite (microstructure) determine the obtainable mechanical properties. It is thus of utmost importance that the formation of this microstructure is fundamentally understood. This enables the optimization of current materials, but also the development of advanced, nano-enabled composites by the novel technique of interleaving nanofibrous textiles. It is more complex than one would think at first sight due to the complicated nature of textiles. For example, composites are made by stacking layers of fabrics, whose interaction with each other and the tooling can result in unwanted defects or misalignments. This is related to the mechanics of the textile material. By following a multi-scale analysis, combining both experimental and numerical techniques, starting with individual fibres and building up till complete nano-interleaved preforms, we will get a fundamental understanding of the micro-macro relationships that govern the mechanics of textile materials. These insights are of crucial importance for further development of high-end nano-enabled composites, and extendable to many other technical textile applications as well.