Curved surfaces made with CURVED knit carbon fiber?

[g-force_addict]

Has it been used in F1?

I mean instead of carbon fiber fabrics being knit flat they can be knit to form curved surfaces.
Sort of cruchet hats.
For example Lexus LFA tub used some specially designed machines to knit the carbon fiber pillars with a little curvature.

[Smokes]

Only if you need the strength if it not acheivable with the right weave resin combination. It is quite and expensive and slow process to do. For aero parts on a f1 car the don't need that extra strength add that to the fact that 50% of the parts made are binned and never used. And the weaving was done for tubular parts on the LFA.

[Jersey Tom]

Flat? How does one define a flat fabric? Fabric is flexible, you can give it curvature in multiple directions. There are however some specialty applications like carbon "socks" which are particularly nice for certain shapes.

[Clew]

Shouldn't the weaker strength example of either 1. knitted curved carbon fiber shape versus 2. flat being molded into the same shape be manufactured thicker during its construction to withstand identical applied pressure forces? That was kind of wordy....wasn't it

Let's take the tub around the driver shaped carbon fiber object to illustrate. First example is a carbon fabric knit with implied tub shaped radiuses and the second example be the result of a flat carbon fabric surface pliable enough to fit over a mold of a tub. They both get baked in the oven to produce identical carbon fiber tubs

I imagine any given radius of both examples of the carbon fiber tub would need to meet FIA crash test pressure forces, along with aerodynamic pressure load tests. If there is failure, the engineers would need to thicken the weak spot to pass the tests.

We're talking about adding grams of weight, but, safety is first with FIA tests

[riff_raff]

Has it been used in F1?....I mean instead of carbon fiber fabrics being knit flat they can be knit to form curved surfaces.....Sort of cruchet hats.
For example Lexus LFA tub used some specially designed machines to knit the carbon fiber pillars with a little curvature.

Yes, all composite textiles (fiberglass, graphite, kevlar, etc.) can be woven into custom preforms such as sleeves. However, the more effective approaches now used for composite textile preforms are 3D techniques, such as stitching. By adding fibers in the Z-axis, inter-laminar shear and buckling properties are greatly enhanced.