Tensile behaviour of regular triaxial braided structures

Triaxial braided structures have proliferated in many applications and specifically, they are extensively used as main constituent materials in various biomedical and composite systems. The topological nature of triaxial braids provides significant enhancement in mechanical properties which can be further tuned by elucidating the most important geometrical and material parameters. In this study, the geometrical models of various braid parameters of triaxial braided structures have been developed for predefined strand geometries. These braid parameters were then used for computing various tensile properties of triaxial braids. Particularly, the elastic properties of triaxial braided structures and their composites have been analysed by including the effect of axial strand crimp. Furthermore, the full set of stress strain characteristics of triaxial braided structures has been predicted based upon braid topological characteristics, constituent strand properties and braid kinematics. The research findings of stress strain characteristics of triaxial braids have been confirmed by making a comparison between the theoretical and experimental results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.