Quantifying effects of manufacturing methods on fiber orientation in unidirectional composites using structure tensor analysis

Important properties of fiber-reinforced composites, such as stiffness, compression strength, and fatigue resistance, are sensitive to fiber alignment. In this paper, we use structure tensor analysis on CT images characterize the orientations in three samples unidirectional composites: pultruded carbon, pre-preg non-crimp glass fabric. Our results show that fibers sample more aligned than two other samples. Through local quantitative analysis, misalignment individual layers contributes overall material. For composite, both stitching bundles backing affect alignment bundles. Quantification caused by these effects allows manufacturers tune production parameters, thread tension, minimize fibers. All our notebooks, code, data available online.