Non-Crimp Fabric Composites

Introduction

The subject of this book, non-crimp fabrics (NCF), is a textile engineer’s answer to a long-standing challenge faced by designers of composite parts: to combine a perfect placement of the reinforcing fibres with easy, inexpensive, automated manufacturing of the part. A part made using unidirectional (UD) tapes, placed by hand or by robot and consolidated in an autoclave, has ideal fibre placement and the best local mechanical properties due to the UD microstructure of the reinforcement. However, the manufacture of such parts is cumbersome and costly. On the other hand, an out-of-autoclave manufacturing process, for example vacuum-assisted resin transfer moulding (RTM) which uses woven laminates, is relatively cheap and takes advantage ...