03/30/2026
By Danielle Fretwell

The Francis College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, invites you to attend a Doctoral Dissertation defense by George Barlow on: "Investigating the Impact of Fiber Entanglement on the Compactability of a Textile."

Candidate Name: George Barlow
Degree: Doctoral
Defense Date: Friday, April 10, 2026
Time: 9-10 a.m.
Location: Southwick 313

Committee:

  • Advisor: Scott Stapleton, Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Murat Inalpolat, Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Lei Chen, Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • David Mollenhauer, Principal Materials Engineer, Material and Manufacturing Director, Air Force Research Lab

Brief Abstract:
Dry fiber textiles provide greater resistance to compaction than idealized bundles of aligned fibers due to fiber entanglement caused by fiber meandering. The compactability of a dry fiber textile is defined as this resistance to consolidation during the compaction process. Micro-CT or serial section scans of the fibers within textiles are meandering and not perfectly aligned, which leads the fiber entanglement. A stochastic method for introducing artificial fiber entanglement into fiberized textile models was developed by selectively swapped fiber paths along the length of the fiber bundle or tow. This method uses three parameters to control the amount of entanglement introduced. By controlling the number of fiber path swaps, the unidirectional fiber bundle’s compaction pressure to fiber volume fraction response can be tailored. To better understand how fiber entanglement influences compaction, entanglement quantifiers were found including fiber crossover density, defined as the number of times a fiber crosses over another fiber within a volume of fibers. Quantification of fiber entanglement from both micro-CT and serial section scans, as well as unidirectional fiber bundle models compacted using LS-DYNA, shows a relationship between the fiber crossover density of a fiber bundle and the compacted resulting fiber volume fraction. After experimentally compacting a carbon fiber weave, the entanglement within the weave was estimated from its fiber volume fraction, and a fiberized textile model was created to evaluate whether the relationship of fiber crossover density could be used to predict how much entanglement to introduce to the tows within the textile compaction model.