Currently, it is challenging to obtain consistent values for the anisotropic electrical conductivity of fabric ply based thermoplastic composites. In this study, the anisotropic electrical conductivity of this type of material was obtained by combining six-probe voltage measurements with a numerical evaluation method to process the voltage measurements. The effect of probe distance and specimen dimensions on the test results was investigated. The measurements show low specimen to specimen variability and the obtained electrical conductivities agree with values obtained by the rule of mixtures and the two-probe measurement method. The conducted research shows that with one experiment, both the in- and the out-of-plane electrical conductivity of polymer composites reinforced with carbon fabrics can be reliably determined, simultaneously.

The transverse permeability is an essential input in describing the consolidation process of CETEX ® laminates. A two-dimensional, finite difference based, Stokes flow solver has been developed to determine the mesoscopic permeability of arbitrary fabric structures. The use of a multigrid solver dramatically decreases the cpu time required (less than one minute on a 512 2 grid). The permeability of a square packed bed of impenetrable cylinders is calculated and shows excellent agreement with values found in literature.