Tensile properties of multilayer-connected biaxial weft knitted fabric reinforced composites for carbon fibers

•We made the MBWK reinforced composites for carbon fibers.•The tensile test was induced for different fabric structures.•Three-layer, four-layer and five-layer connection structures were used.•One-way analysis of variance and one-dimensional linear regression were used.

Multilayered-connected biaxial weft knitted (MBWK) fabric reinforced composites have excellent tensile properties. Three kinds of different fabrics reinforced composites are used in this paper, which are three-layer-connected biaxial weft knitted fabric, four-layer-connected biaxial weft knitted fabric and five-layer-connected biaxial weft knitted fabric. The tensile properties of MBWK fabrics reinforced composites are studied with 0° and 90° directional testing with different carbon fiber volume fractions. The results show that the carbon fiber volume fraction has significant effect on tensile strength of MBWK fabrics reinforced composites. The linear correlation between tensile strength and carbon fiber volume fraction is very well in the certain range, and failure analyses are also available by means of sample debris examination to identify the failure modes and the fracture surfaces.