Specialty Weaving > Braiding > 2-D Woven Structures

Multi-Directional Weaving

Fiber Materials, Inc. offers technical/engineering support in the design of woven preforms/fabrics to meet customer applications.  Weaving architectures include 2-D fabrics/tapes, braiding, 3-D orthogonal, polar and N-D (4-D, 5-D, etc.) constructions.

FMI^® multi-directional woven products allow for placement of fibers in various directions to obtain required weave architecture and physical and mechanical properties.  Applications requiring multi-directional woven structures usually are those where extremes in temperature and highly stressed states are encountered.  Various high strength and high temperature fibrous materials in tow or yarn forms are used in weaving.  Fibers and filaments woven include quartz, zirconia, silicon carbide, carbon, graphite, tungsten and impregnated yarns.  Various fibers can also be woven into the same preform (hybrid weaves).  Composite preforms can be woven with fibers oriented in three directions, as with orthogonal (mutually perpendicular) or polar (cylindrical) constructions.  In addition, fibers may be oriented in 4-, 5-, 7- or 11- directions, which are referred to as "N-D" constructions.

Representative Weave Constructions

Unique weaving techniques developed by FMI engineers allow the designer to tailor weave preform construction to attain desired mechanical and physical properties.  Fiber type, direction, spacing and volume fraction can be varied to meet specified strength, modulus, density, electrical and thermal properties.

Woven structures are supplied by FMI either as preforms or as impregnated components.  FMI maintains comprehensive impregnation/densification facilities for fabrication of fiber reinforced composites.  For more information of FMI fabrication capabilities, refer to the section on  Composite Materials.