Hexagonal hollow fabrics

For hexagonal hollow structures, if there are n cells in the thickness direction, then 2n layers of single layers of fabrics must be used. The adjacent layers of the 2n fabrics will be joined with and separated from one another at a predesigned pattern. Based on such specifications, a cross-sectional view of a hexagonal hollow fabric can be defined. Weaves will be assigned to the single layers as well as the joined layers. Once all these layers have received weaves respectively, all these weaves will be combined to form the overall weave for the hexagonal hollow structure based on the layer relationship. 

Figure 3.16 Final weave for the hexagonal hollow fabric.

It has been a common practice that a 2D matrix is used to record the data of a weave (Li et al., 1988 Milasuis and Reklaitis, 1988 Chen et al., 1996). In the case of a singlelayer fabric, a 2D binary matrix is used to represent the weave, whose element values are either 0 or 1. 1 indicates a warp-over-weft crossover and 0 means a weft-overwarp crossover. The position of each element in the matrix is located by a coordinate (x,y) where x indicates the xth column from the left and y the yth row from the bottom. This approach is adopted in generating the weaves for hexagonal hollow structures (Chen et al., 2004). 

The final weave for the whole hexagonal hollow structure is the combination of these base matrices for the three areas. Figure 3.16 is the overall weave responsible for weaving one repeat of the hexagonal hollow stmcture with four layers of fabrics, in the sequence of areas I, II, III and IV. 

Sidorenko et al. succeeded in fabrication of well-ordered nanostructures in thin polymer films by supramolecular assembly of PS-Zi-P4VP and 2-(4-hydro-xybenzeneazo) benzoic acid (HABA), consisting of cylindrical nanodomains formed by P4VP-HABA associates in a matrix of PS (Sidorenko et al., 2003). As shown in Scheme 12.7, extraction of HABA with a selective solvent results in nanochannel membranes with a hexagonal lattice of hollow channels in the diameter crossing the membrane from top to bottom. 

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