General definition of 3D warp interlock fabric architecture

3D warp interlock fabric can be used as a fibrous reinforcement for composite material. Despite of the numerous research papers dealing with this specific woven structure, few researches were conducted to clearly define this multi-layer fabric. Moreover, in many research papers, unskilled scientists of weaving technology have some difficulty to describe the different components of the 3D warp interlock fabric and sometimes make some confusion between the different architecture. Then, with a lack of a clear definition of these 3D multi-layer fabrics, most of the research papers are conducted on a very limited number of structures such as orthogonal, angle and layer to layer interlock. Thus, based on different definitions proposed by skilled scientists, a new general definition of a 3D warp interlock fabric has been proposed to better describe the position of the several yarns located inside the 3D woven structure. Thanks to this improved definition, we hope that the scientific community will use it in order to better design new architectures and conduct finer research based on these product parameters. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.