Analysis of the bending behaviour of flax based reinforcements used in shape forming

The bending behaviour of woven perform was investigated in order to better understand the formation of some defects during sheet forming such as wrinkling and tow buckling. The fabric composition considering hybrid and pure flax fabrics as well as some test conditions like relative humidity were examined. On the one hand, the results show a drop of the bending stiffness with flax/PLA commingled fabric. On the other hand, the study points out that moisture enhances the bending rigidity especially in the case of pure flax fabric. However, an excess of humidity, for instance 100% relative humidity, leads to an opposite effect.
Comment: TexComp-11, Leuven : Belgium (2013)