Design and fabrication of novel auxetic weft-knitted fabrics with Kevlar yarns

Abstract

For the purpose of fabricating three kinds of auxetic weft knitted fabrics, three different geometrical structures namely rotational structure, foldable structure and double-headed arrow topological structures with three different knit loop lengths were produced using computerized flat knitting machine. Experimental results show that all three different weft knitted fabrics have auxetic effect. The Poisson’s ratio values of the three fabrics are inversely proportional to knit loop lengths. However, differences exist between the curves of Poisson’s ratio relative to strain. With regards to the rotational and double-headed arrow topological structures, the curves tend to be monotonic, whilst that of the foldable structure takes the form of a parabola. This research thus confirms the possibility of producing auxetic fabrics based on several geometrical structures using flat knitting technology

Keywords:

• Negative Poisson’s ratio
• weft knitted fabric
• flat knitting
• geometrical modeling
• auxetic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017T100325, 2016M591767), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP51625B), the Natural Science Foundation of China (11502163), and the Applied Foundation Research Funds of China Textile Industry Association (J201604).