Effects of through-the-thickness stitches on the elastic behavior of multi-axial warp knit fabric composites

In order to improve the resistance to delamination and some in-plane and out-of-plane properties of composite materials for structural integrity, through-the-thickness reinforcement must be provided. The reinforcement is achieved by using the stitched multi-axial warp knit (MWK) fabrics as preforms for the fabrication of composite structures. In this study, the influence of stitches on the elastic behavior of MWK fabric composites under tensile and shear loadings was investigated by utilizing a unified micromechanical model. In the analysis, the in situ constituent properties and fiber volume ratios of insertion and stitching fibers determined from the geometric parameters set by the representative volume were used. The crucial step in the analysis was to correlate the averaged stress states in the constituents by adopting the bridging matrix. The experimental results were compared with the predicted results. It was found that the predicted results are in reasonably good agreement with the experimental results.