SENSITIVITY OF MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES TO BRAID MISALIGNMENT IN TRIAXIAL BRAID COMPOSITE PANELS

A significant portion of the cost of composite structures is embedded in manufacturing, inspection, and maintenance. Much of this cost is du e to unfamiliarity with the expected behavior of the material. Unlike with metals, for which there is a relative wealth of experimental and process data, the results from testing of composites and in particular , textile composites, often defy intuition. If proper specifications a nd manufacturing process controls are to be placed such that the costs of achieving those specifications are not prohibitive, it must be und erstood how sensitive mechanical properties are to these parameters. I n this paper, results from a series of tests on 2D triaxial braid comp osite panels are presented. The focus of these experiments is to deter mine the sensitivity of strength and fiber volume fraction to a small degree of misalignment (+/- 1 to 5 degrees) in braid angle.