Preforming analysis of biaxial braided fabrics sleeving on pipes and ducts

This work investigates the preforming process of composite ducts made of bi axial braided fabrics. Two models based on the geometric modeling were deve loped to predict the fiber orientation and surface density. It is found tha t fabrics tend to slip during preforming in the case of curved ducts. A sli p coefficient was introduced in the model to take this into account. A seri es of experiments were conducted to validate the models. The results show g ood agreement between model prediction and experiments.