Traditional composite materials constituted by long fiber oriented along one direction presents optimum stiffness and strength material properties, when the stress main direction is parallel to the fiber. However, these conventional constructions of composite laminates present poor out of plane mechanical properties and require several manufacturing steps, resulting in high production costs.
A solution to these problems come from the application of tridimensional textile technologies to composite preforms manufacturing. This technology includes braiding, 3D weaving, weft knitting, multilayer sewing 4/5D and stitching as preforms joining technique.
These technologies allow the production of near-net complex fiber preforms, achieving significant reductions of labor and manufacturing costs. Besides these benefits, exist the mechanical improvements, as better of damage tolerance and structural integrity, due mainly to the improvement obtained in the stiffness and strength out of plane properties. The existence of the out of plane fiber and the high interweaving of the constituent fiber of the preform, gives the high out of plane mechanical properties and performances.
In the present work each one of these technologies of production of tridimensional preforms are analyzed in detail. Special attention is paid to advantages they present in order to be applied on automotion versus other traditional materials as steel or aluminum.
Finally, different textile technologies are analyzed and compared in order to be applied in several automotive applications.