THE USE OF AUTOMATED IMAGE-ANALYSIS FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF FABRIC ARCHITECTURE ON THE PROCESSING AND PROPERTIES OF FIBER-REINFORCED COMPOSITES PRODUCED BY RTM

The use of resin transfer moulding (RTM) as an economic means of produ cing high performance fibre-reinforced composites is critically limite d by the permeability of the fabrics employed. Commercial fabrics are available where the architecture of their reinforcement is designed to cluster the fibres, giving higher permeabilities than conventional fa brics. This has been shown to improve processing times but there is ev idence that such clustering is detrimental to mechanical performance. The objective of this work was to relate variations in permeability, m echanical performance and microstructure. This was achieved by produci ng carbon/epoxy plates of differing weave styles by RTM in a transpare nt mould. Permeabilities were calculated. Interlaminar shear, tensile and compressive tests were performed and fractal analysis was carried out to obtain fractal dimensions for the three fabrics. Variations in permeabilities and mechanical properties can be related to observed di fferences in the microstructure. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.