| Tubular structure as a foundational structure type, is widely used in engineering, and is in huge demand. With the development of high-strength lightweight composite materials in demand, three-dimensional(3D) textile composite materials have been developed quickly. The composite materials with 3D tubular fabric as its skeleton have many advantages, such as lightweight, high specific stiffness and strength, excellent fatigue resistance, corrosion resistance, etc. And now they have been got more and more accepted.Throughout the research status of 3D tubular fabrics at home and abroad, there are many weaving methods and relative looms. But they have many shortcomings, such as little size, thinner thickness, poorer product adaptability, lower weaving efficiency, etc. Most of the looms are in the manual or half mechanical condition, so it is difficult to guarantee the quality of 3D fabric. Circular orbit weaving method is a new method to weave 3D woven tubular fabrics. In this method, warp direction is arranged along the circumference of circle orbit, and warp can be circumferential movement along the circular orbit. Weft yarns are inserted in the direction of woven radially. Using circumferential opening, radial shedding, due to the radial shedding is open, it can realize weft insertion continuous and weaving process automation.At present, the research about circular orbit weaving method is at an initial stage, the fabrics of 3D orthogonal tissue have been successfully woven already. However, the 2.5D tissue is relatively common than 3D used in weaving 3D fabrics. The structure and looming design of tubular fabric were studied through design of structure, design of weaving factor, process of weaving and analysis of off-loom fabric in this paper.Firstly, loom of circular orbit weaving was introduced briefly and different kinks of 3D tissues were analysed in this paper. Due to the structural specialty, there were many kinds of warp gaiting’s methods whose distinctions were analysed. Then the loom of circular orbit was modified in order to make it easy to use and meet the tubular fabric’s requirements. Finally, three kinds of 3D weaves were woven on the loom, the off-loom fabric was examined after its structure was fixed and the surface morphology as well as the sectional morphology were gathered by digital equipment. The late-stage study was guided according to the analysis. The results show that:(1) All of the 3D weaves can be woven by means of circular orbit weaving method, the thickness of tubular fabric made in this way gets thicker gradually as the increasing layers of orbit.(2) Numerous methods of warp gaiting are used in the process of weaving 3D tubular fabric by the means of circular orbit weaving method. The number of weft-insertion and woven efficiency are affected and the structure of off-loom tubular fabric is different as well with different methods of warp gaiting in an actual process of weaving.(3) The sliders on circular orbits loaded with yarns can move freely along orbits and be not affected by other orbits. At same time, there are many different sheds by changing amount of yarns in each orbit, so that it can weave more complex 3D tubular woven fabrics.(4) The tubular woven fabrics of different weaves have good appearance, which testifies the correction of the weaves design methods. But there are some difference between fabric slices and fabric section because of some reasons such as fewer numbers of warps and uneven beating-up.With the further improvement of weaving process and the loom, the weave design of 3D tubular woven fabric is more flexible and the available materials are more widely, which will provide technical support for high performance fiber weaving. |
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