3D Fabrics with Negative Poisson's Ratio: A Review

Three-dimensional (3D) fabrics with negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) are known as 3D auxetic fabrics. They expand (or contract) in the direction perpendicular to stretch (or compression) under uniaxial tensile (or compressing) conditions. Many enhanced properties come with this unusual auxetic behaviour, such as shear modulus, indentation resistance, fracture toughness, energy absorption, synclastic curvature, etc. Therefore, these 3D auxetic metamaterials have a broad prospect in applications like personal protective equipment as a replacement of polyurethane foams, fabric-reinforced composites with improved ballistic and impact resistance, and women's brassiere paddings with perfect shape-ability. This paper presents a review on 3D fabrics with NPR produced with different fabric technologies, including weaving, knitting, nonwoven, and other techniques.