Special Issue "Advancements of 3D Woven Structures: Design, Manufacturing and Their Application in Technical Textiles"

Dear Colleagues,

This is a Special Issue of the journal Materials dedicated to exploring the innovative design technique, simplified manufacturing methods, and broad applications of 3D woven structures in the field of technical textiles/products. The current research trend in most textile technical application is to become familiarized with low-cost manufacturing techniques for advanced material manufacturing without compromising the overall performances. In recent decades, enormous research works have been conducted on the design, manufacturing, and applications of various 2D fabric structures. Recently, apart from their good mouldability, 3D woven fabric structures have also been designed and developed using advanced techniques to extensively substitute 2D fabric structures. This is due to the fact that 3D woven structures could provide various advantages, including good mechanical behavior, efficiently draped with better surface quality and creating complex shape forms along with good mouldability while forming good ballistic and impact resistance behavior, good flexibility, etc. toward different technical product requirements. However, 3D woven structures also face typical difficulties, including yarn damage during production and problems with producing a large amount due to the production cost and low production speed, and need a dedicated weaving loom for producing a specific fabric type or very time-consuming modifications to the weaving loom. This greatly hinders the effective and wider applications of the promising 3D woven fabric structure.

The main aim of this Special Issue is to bring new insights into innovative design methods, new manufacturing techniques, and effective utilization of 3D woven structures for various technical textiles/products. Therefore, the editors invite the academic, industry and research community to support Materials in this very important initiative by submitting new and ground-breaking papers that will constitute the roadmap of our future research.

The articles presented in this Special Issue will cover various topics, including but not limited to the new classification and design techniques, theoretical, analytical, and multiscale modeling, novel manufacturing techniques, experimental testing, and characterizations and applications of 3D woven structures as dry and composite reinforcement in various technical textiles including defense, aeronautical, automotive, civil infrastructure, etc. You are also welcome to submit comparative studies of 2D, UD, and 3D woven structures.

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• New design system, classifications, and optimizations of 3D woven structures;
• Theoretical, analytical, and multiscale modeling of 3D woven structures;
• Manufacturing technique of 3D woven structures;
• 3D woven structures for novel composite reinforcement;
• Characterization methods of 3D woven structures for better understanding;
• 2D/3D woven structures in protection equipment;
• Structural effect analysis on 3D woven preform;
• 3D woven structure in defense, aeronautical, automotive, civil infrastructure, etc. applications;
• Comparative study of 2D, UD, and 3D woven structures.

Prof. Dr. Francois Boussu
Dr. Mulat Alubel Abtew
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• design and classifications of 3D woven structures
• modeling of 3D woven structures for optimal manufacturing
• manufacturing technique of 3D woven structures
• novel 3D woven structure characterizations
• 3D woven structure application as dry and composite reinforcement for technical textiles/products
• forming behaviors and analysis
• experimental investigations (quasi-static and dynamic loadings)
• impact and penetration
• failure and defect analysis