Improvement of tufting mechanism during the advanced 3-Dimensional tufted composites manufacturing: To the optimisation of tufting threads degradation

Tufting is an ongoing technique to manufacture the 3-dimensional (3D) textile reinforcement for composites. The inserted tufting threads provide a good mechanical performance through-the-thickness of the final composite parts. However, the degradation of inserted tufting thread can be experienced during the tufting process. This degradation brings out the negative influence on the mechanical performance of the reinforced tufting thread and of the composite, which is not yet studied and analysed. In the present work, to improve the understanding of tufting threads degradation, the image-observation analysis and the mechanical testing are firstly carried out to the inserted threads taken from the conventional tufting process. In addition, the effect of tufting density on the threads degradation is investigated. An improved tufting mechanism by adding a guide needle without tufting threads is proposed to reduce the inserted threads degradation. The results show that in the improved tufting process the threads degradation decreases 30% compared to the conventional tufting and the tensile performance of the inserted threads has a significant improvement.