Additive manufacturing of multidirectional preforms and composites: Microstructural design, fabrication, and characterization

Abstract

In contrast to conventional preforming methods, additive manufacturing features direct and layer-by-layer fabrication and, thus, provides new opportunities for the design and fabrication of composite materials. The rapid advancements in additive manufacturing techniques have provided us with the impetus to examine the feasibility of manufacturing multidirectional preforms and their composites based on direct, layer-wise fabrication. In this chapter, we have demonstrated the additive manufacturing of typical multidirectional preforms for composites (Sect. 2), examined the microstructural design as well as additive manufacturing of 3D orthogonal preforms and composites (Sect. 3), evaluated the microstructural features and mechanical properties of additively manufactured multidirectional preforms and composites (Sect. 4), and investigated the printing direction dependence of mechanical behavior of additively manufactured 3D preforms and their composites (Sect. 5).