Building a Model to Understand the High Performance Fiber Fuzz Created by Yarn and Pulley Interactions During Textile Processing (abstract only)

Abstract

Thanks to their great specific rigidities and resistances, composite materials tend to progressively replace metal in the design of high-performance structures. As an example, the last generation of airliners (Airbus A350, Boeing 787, and Bombardier CSeries) now includes up to 50% in mass of composite materials. Carbon fibers are often chosen to design parts that undergo heavy loads. These fibers are usually shipped as tows, consisting of hundreds to thousands clustered single filaments. May it be for coating, storage, braiding or weaving process, carbon tows often needs to be driven through a series of pulleys. Such a process may induce strong material loss due to filament rupture and therefore induce unwanted costs. In order to understand the cause of this rupture, carbon fiber tows behavior have been investigated through experimental and numerical analyses. Filament scale explicit dynamic calculations have been conducted and compared to experimental measurements gathered on a specifically designed test bed. The experimental and numerical data obtained is used to determine the prominent factor inducing the fiber degradation.