Development and characterization of high performance auxetic fabrics produced using purl knitted structures

Abstract

This paper reports an overview of auxetic fibrous structures with negative Poisson´s ratio (NPR). These type of behaviour have a vast potential for applications in personal protection due to their high energy absorption and excellent impact resistance. The aim of this study, is to evaluate the behaviour of purl structure design, produced through weft knitting technology using high performance polyamide (PA) fibres. Fabric structural parameters (e.g. loop length) and machine parameters (e.g. take down load) were varied in order to investigate their influence on the behaviour of the produced fibres structures and their composites. Overall, all the auxetic fabrics and composites showed a superior strength and energy absorption capability as compared to their non-auxetic counterparts.