Carbon fiber texture and performance

Carbon fiber texture and performance

Plain weave
The plain weave carbon fiber board looks symmetrical and has a small checkerboard-like appearance. In this weaving, the tow is knitted in an up / down pattern. The spacing between the interlaced tows is small, which makes the plain weave very stable. Fabric stability is the ability of a fabric to maintain its weaving angle and fiber orientation. Due to its high stability, plain weave is not suitable for stacks with complex contours, it will not be as flexible as some other weaves. Generally, plain weaves are suitable for the appearance of flat plates, pipes and 2D curvilinear structures.

Twill weave
Twill is a weave between plain weave and satin weave. Twill has good flexibility, can be formed into complex contours, and maintains fabric stability better than satin weave, but not as good as plain weave. If you follow a tow in a twill weave, it will pass through a certain number of tows and then the same number of tows. The top / bottom pattern creates the appearance of a diagonal arrow, called a "twill line." Compared to plain weave, the longer the distance between the drag staggers means less crimp and less potential stress concentration.

Unidirectional cloth
Unidirectional cloth is also called UD cloth, all fibers are facing the same direction. This gives unidirectional (UD) fabrics some high strength advantages. UD fabrics are not woven fabrics and there are no crimped interwoven tows. Only highly oriented continuous fibers can increase strength and stiffness. Another benefit is the ability to control product strength by adjusting the layup angle and layup ratio. A good example is the use of unidirectional cloth to optimize the ply structure of a bicycle frame to adjust performance. The frame must maintain stiffness and stiffness in the area of the bottom bracket to transmit the driver's power to the wheels, but the frame also needs to have some flexibility and flexibility. With a unidirectional cloth, you can choose the precise direction of the carbon fiber to get the strength you need.
One of the main disadvantages of unidirectional cloth is poor operability. Unidirectional cloth tends to spread out easily during the layup process because it does not have interwoven fibers to hold it together. If the fibers are placed incorrectly, it is almost impossible to reposition them correctly again. One-way cutting can also cause problems. If any fiber is pulled up at a specific place, those loose fibers will be pulled all the way to the entire cloth surface. In general, if a unidirectional cloth is selected for lamination, plain, twill, and satin weave fabrics are used for the first and last layers to help improve processability and part durability. In the middle layer, a unidirectional cloth is used to precisely control the strength of the entire component.