Preforming analysis of biaxial braided fabrics sleeving on pipes and ducts

This work investigates the preforming process of composite ducts made of biaxial braided fabrics. Two models based on the geometric modeling were developed to predict the fiber orientation and surface density. It is found that fabrics tend to slip during preforming in the case of curved ducts. A slip coefficient was introduced in the model to take this into account. A series of experiments were conducted to validate the models. The results show good agreement between model prediction and experiments.