Composite Fabrics & Structures Directory

Reinforcement Is the Fabric's Job

In a composite, the fibre carries the load and the resin holds the fibres in shape. The textile therefore decides most of the performance: glass for cost-effective strength, carbon for stiffness at minimum weight, aramid where impact and abrasion dominate. Reinforcement fabrics are made as plain and satin weaves, as braids that sleeve over a form, as multiaxial stitched stacks that lay several fibre directions in one fabric, and as nonwoven veils and mats that give a smooth, resin-rich surface.

Form matters as much as fibre. A three-dimensional woven preform can be shaped close to the final part — a beam, a duct, a joint — so the composite needs little machining and has no weak delamination plane. Braided structures excel on tubes and pressure vessels, chopped-strand and continuous-filament mats serve moulded panels, and hybrid fabrics place expensive carbon only where the load path needs it, with glass doing the rest.

Where Composite Structures Work

Aerospace is the showcase: Albany International Techniweave, Inc (USA), listed below, describes designing and manufacturing single-layer and two- and three-dimensional multilayer woven fabrics, composites, preforms and braided structures for aerospace, spacecraft and industrial markets. Around that tier sit marine, automotive, wind-energy, construction and sporting-goods applications, each trading cost against weight and fatigue life.

The rest of this directory's listings fill in the supply chain: vertically integrated fibreglass producers such as A. Johnson Composites, Inc (Taiwan), with fibreglass fabrics, filament and texturised yarns, chopped strands and rovings; mat and veil specialists; and regional reinforcement makers. Each entry gives the maker's country and a description of its products, because in composites the honest description — fibre, form, specification — is most of the value of the listing.

Buying Reinforcement Fabric

Buy on the datasheet: fibre type and grade, areal weight, weave or stitch architecture, sizing compatibility with your resin system, and width. Sizing — the chemical finish on the fibre — is the detail newcomers miss; a fabric sized for epoxy can give poor results in polyester, and the supplier's technical notes, usually linked from listings like these, state the intended systems plainly.

For structural parts, ask about traceability and test certificates, and prototype with the exact fabric form you will produce with — a hand lay-up in woven cloth teaches little about a stitched multiaxial's drape. The stitchbond directory in the chips covers the stitching technology behind many multiaxial fabrics, and the geotextiles directory covers the civil-engineering end of the reinforcement family.

From Fabric to Finished Part

Between the reinforcement fabric and the finished composite stand the processes that give the fabric its resin: hand lay-up and infusion for prototypes and boats, resin transfer moulding for closed, repeatable parts, prepregging — coating the fabric with resin in advance — for aerospace consistency, and pultrusion for constant-section profiles. Each process prefers a different fabric form: drapable weaves for double curvature, stitched multiaxials for flat strength, braids for tubes, mats for cheap thickness.

Quality in composites is statistical: void content, fibre volume fraction and cure are measured on samples, and the fabric supplier's consistency — weight tolerance, sizing uniformity, freedom from contamination — decides how wide the process window runs. That is why the makers below publish specifications rather than adjectives, and why aerospace and pressure-vessel work buys from qualified lists. For civil and industrial parts the same logic applies at friendlier tolerances, and the listed producers cover both registers.

Buyers comparing the listed makers should note which fibre forms each actually stocks, because tooling a part around an unavailable fabric weight is a common and avoidable project delay.

Composite Fabric Makers Listed Here

45 companies and organisations are listed in this directory, each with its country and a description of its products. Follow a name to the company's own website.