Concurrent Measurement of Local and Global in-Plane Permeability of Reinforcement Fabrics through Real-Time Image Processing

Properties of reinforcement fabrics, such as permeability, are typically characterized in a volume-averaging sense, whereas the fabric microstructure may vary spatially. This makes designing an effective resin infusion strategy for defect-free composite fabrication challenging. Our work presents a concurrent method for simultaneously measuring the local and global in-plane permeability and offers a handy technique for evaluating spatial variability. This experimental setup was similar to that of unidirectional in-plane permeability tests. The fabric, however, should be cut and tested along the angle bisector of warp and weft directions. The evolution of resin flow fronts was analyzed in real-time using in-house code through live video monitoring. The local and global in-plane permeability components were then obtained by applying Darcy’s law regionally and globally. The results are in good agreement with those obtained by radial permeability experiments. Statistical analysis of local permeability reveals that the microstructure variability follows a normal distribution. A complete description of fabric microstructure provided by X-ray microcomputed tomography suggests that local permeability and microstructure variation are closely related, confirming the efficacy of the newly proposed method. This work enables the estimation of fabric structure variability and local and global in-plane permeability in a single test without resorting to expensive volume imaging techniques.