Phys. Status Solidi B 251, No. 2, 281–288 (2014) / DOI 10.1002/pssb.
201384239
3D auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics
Zhengyue Wang and Hong Hu*
Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Received 13 December 2012, accepted 11 April 2013
Published online 20 September 2013
Keywords 3D fabric structure, auxetic, negative Poisson’s ratio, spacer fabric, warp knitting
* Corresponding author: e-mail tchuhong@polyu.edu.hk, Phone: þ852 3400 3089, Fax: þ852 2773 1432
Auxetic fabrics have gained an increasing attention in the
auxetic material area in recent years. Especially, auxetic fabrics
fabricated based on both weft-knitted and warp-knitted structures
have made some important progress. However, all the knitted
auxetic fabrics reported so far are fabricated based on 2D knitted
structures, although some of the weft-knitted auxetic fabrics are
finally formed into 3D forms. This paper reports a novel kind of
3D auxetic fabric fabricated based on a warp-knitted spacer
structure with adoption of a special geometrical configuration
which is formed with parallelograms. The auxetic behavior of
1 Introduction Auxetic fabrics are auxetic textiles
that have a negative Poisson’s ratio [1–3]. They differ from
conventional textile materials and can laterally expand when
stretched or laterally shrink when compressed. Because of
this non-conventional behavior, auxetic fabrics display a
number of particular properties, among which two important
properties could be mentioned. One is the structure opening
when stretched, which leads to an increase of fabric air
permeability under tension. The other is the formation of
synclastic curvature under bending, making auxetic fabrics
very easy to fit the shape of the human body. These enhanced
properties make auxetic materials very attractive for many
practical applications such as protective sportswear, func-
tional underwear, children’s wear, maternity clothes, blast
curtain, and medical bandages, etc.
Compared to auxetic fibers [4–6] and auxetic yarns [7–
8], the studies of auxetic fabrics are still limited. According
to Alderson et al. [9], two potential approaches could be used
to produce auxetic fabrics. The first one is to knit or weave
auxetic yarns into a fabric. It was reported that the helical
auxetic yarn was employed by Miller et al. [10, 11] to weave
auxetic fabrics for composite reinforcement. These auxetic-
yarn-made fabrics could display an obvious auxetic
behavior. The second approach is to use conventional yarns
and to knit or weave these into a structure which is itself
auxetic. Compared with weaving techniques, knitting
pss
solidi
physica
status
b
www.pss-b.com
basic solid state physics
these fabrics is discussed in terms of tensile direction,
geometrical parameter, and repeated extension. The shape fitting
ability on a spherical surface is also demonstrated. The results
shows that the 3D auxetic fabrics have auxetic behavior in all the
fabric plane directions and the highest auxetic effect is obtained
when stretched in the weft direction of the fabric. The 3D auxetic
fabrics also display an excellent shape fitting ability, which
makes them very attractive for various applications where fitting
to the human body’s shape is highly required, such as bra cups,
protectors for knees and elbows, shoes covers, etc.
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
techniques are more suitable to realize auxetic structures
due to high processing flexibility and structure variety. To
date, most auxetic fabrics made of non-auxetic yarns are
fabricated based on knitted structures. Hu et al. developed a
series of weft-knitted auxetic fabrics by using flat knitting
technology based on various auxetic geometrical struc-
tures [12, 13]. Using the knitting processes they suggested,
auxetic fabrics with a Poisson’s ratio up to 0.5 could be
obtained. In addition to the auxetic effect, some structural
effects produced by these weft-knitted auxetic fabrics are
also very attractive for fashion design. Although all the weft-
knitted auxetic fabrics were fabricated based on 2D knitted
structures, some of them were finally formed into 3D forms,
such as folded weft-knitted fabrics, whose auxetic behavior
is realized when the folded structure is opened under tension.
Compared with weft knitting, warp knitting is particularly
suitable to make fabrics with open structures. Ugbolue
et al. [14, 15] fabricated a group of warp-knitted auxetic
fabrics based on re-entrant structures. However, it seems that
the knitting processes for these fabrics were complicated and
not easy to be realized. Besides, the open structure of the
fabrics is not very stable and it is difficult for practical
applications. Alderson et al. [9] developed another group of
warp-knitted auxetic fabrics based on a double arrowhead
geometrical configuration using two kinds of fibers with
different mechanical properties. It was found that the auxetic
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
 pss b
solidi
physica
status
282
effect of the fabric is only achieved when stretched in the
diagonal directions. Recently, Ge and Hu [16] developed a
novel 3D auxetic fabric structure for composite reinforce-
ment by using warp-knitted stitches to bind multilayer pre-
arranged straight yarns. The technique proposed by them is
innovative, but the development is still at a primary stage.
This paper reports a novel kind of 3D auxetic fabric
fabricated from a warp-knitted spacer structure based on a
special geometrical configuration having auxetic
behavior [17]. The new auxetic fabrics not only display
an auxetic effect in all the fabric plane directions in a large
range of tensile strain, but also have a good shape fitting
ability to fit 3D spherical surface. These behaviors make
them very attractive for a number of potential applications in
various areas such as sports, medicine, protection, etc.
2 Experimental
2.1 Design of geometrical structure As shown in
Fig. 1a, the 3D auxetic fabrics were fabricated based on a
warp-knitted spacer structure in which two face fabric layers
are linked together by a group of spacer yarns as the middle
layer. In this kind of fabric structure, monofilaments are
normally used as spacer yarns to better keep the space
formed between two face fabric layers. For conventional
spacer fabrics, two fabric face layers are knitted with
commonly used warp-knitted structures which cannot
display auxetic effect. Therefore, for producing the auxetic
effect in a spacer fabric, the design of a geometrical structure
which can produce an auxetic effect is very important. The
designed geometrical structures should meet the following
requirements: (a) to be able to produce the auxetic effect in
different fabric directions; (b) to be easily knitted on a warp
knitting machine; (c) the resultant fabric structure should be
stable. Although many geometrical structures for producing
Figure 1 Sketch drawing of: (a) auxetic spacer fabric; (b) geometrical structure for face fabric layers; (c) repeating unit.
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Z. Wang and H. Hu: 3D auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics
the auxetic effect can be found in the literature, these
structures are not easy to fabricate into a warp-knitted fabric.
In this regard, a new geometrical structure should be
specially designed. As shown in Fig. 1b, a geometrical
structure which can meet the above requirements and can be
easily knitted into spacer fabrics was designed after a series
of trials. The repeating unit of the geometrical structure is
shown in Fig. 1c. It is formed with two parallelograms which
are arranged in a V form. In each parallelogram, there are six
ribs separated by connecting points of the parallelogram with
other neighbor parallelograms. For easy indentification, the
ribs with the same length are drawn with the same line
thickness, and all ribs are grouped as short ribs and long ribs.
Three geometrical parameters, i.e., length of the short rib l1,
length of long rib l2, and angle formed between the short and
long ribs u, are sufficient to determine the geometrical feature
of the structure. Although the length ratio of the long and
short ribs, r ¼ l1/l2, can be also used as another geometrical
parameter, it is not an independent parameters when l1 and l2
are given. It should be pointed out that the structures with the
same r and u, but with different l1 and l2 will have a similar
geometrical configuration. Since the Poisson’s ratio is
independent of material scale, the fabrics with the similar
geometrical configuration should have similar auxetic effect.
As shown in Fig. 2, the auxetic effect of the structure mainly
comes from the rotations of ribs around their connecting
points when a tension is applied to the fabric structure. There
is no doubt that under tension, the lengths of ribs could be
changed. However, this change in auxetic effect is small if
compared with the rotations of ribs.
2.2 Fabrication of auxetic fabrics Based on the
above geometrical structure, four auxetic warp-knitted
spacer fabrics, respectively, designated as Fabric A, Fabric
www.pss-b.com
 Original
Paper

Phys. Status Solidi B 251, No. 2 (2014) 283

Figure 2 Realization of auxetic effect due to rotations of ribs.

B, Fabric C, and Fabric D, were fabricated with non-auxetic
polyester filaments. The fabrics were firstly knitted on two
double warp knitting machines equipped with six yarn-guide
bars, and then treated with a heating process to fix their
geometrical configuration as designed. The details of the
fabrics are listed in Table 1. For the purpose of comparison,
Fabric A, Fabric B, and Fabric C were fabricated with the
same yarns and same lengths of ribs but with different angle
u, and Fabric C and Fabric D were fabricated with the same
angle u but with different yarns and different lengths of ribs.
Figure 3 shows the photographs of the fabrics fabricated. It
can be seen that although the short and long ribs have
different thicknesses, the geometrical configuration as above
designed was successfully achieved in the structure of the
face fabric layers.
2.3 Measurement of Poisson’s ratio In order to
assess the auxetic behavior of the above 3D warp-knitted
auxetic fabrics, a series of mono-tensile tests was conducted
in three fabric plane directions. As shown in Fig. 4, the fabric
samples in a fabric plane size of 200 mm  50 mm were cut
along the weft, warp, and diagonal directions, respectively.

Table 1 Details of auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics.

fabric code yarns used geometrical parameters

face layers middle layer l1 (mm) l2 (mm) r ¼ l1/l2 u (degree)

Fabric A 400D/96F polyester multifilament 0.12 mm polyester monofilament 0.22 0.44 0.5 75
Fabric B 400D/96F polyester multifilament 0.12 mm polyester monofilament 0.22 0.44 0.5 65
Fabric C 400D/96F polyester multifilament 0.12 mm polyester monofilament 0.22 0.44 0.5 55
Fabric D 150D/48F polyester multifilament 0.1 mm polyester monofilament 0.16 0.32 0.5 55

www.pss-b.com ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

 pss b
solidi
physica
status
284
Figure 3 Photographs of auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics.
The testing device used was an Instron 5566 tensile machine.
The gauge length and tensile speed were set at 150 mm and
50 mm min1, respectively. As shown in Fig. 5, nine points
were marked in the central part of each sample in order to
facilitate recording deformation information during tensile
tests. The tensile test process was photographed by a camera
with a timer shot function. Twenty-five photos were taken
for each sample with a time interval of 6 s. The distances of
the marks in the photos were then measured via a screen ruler
to calculate the strains of the fabric structure in both tensile
direction and transversal direction. Finally, Poisson’s ratio y
was calculated using the following equation:
ey
y¼ ;
ex
where ex is the axial strain and ey is the transverse strain.
Figure 4 Samples cut in different directions.
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Z. Wang and H. Hu: 3D auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics
3 Results and discussion
3.1 Auxetic behavior in different fabric plane
directions The auxetic fabrics shown above are not
isotropic because the arrangements of the yarns in each
fabric direction are not the same. Although these fabrics have
3D structures, their auxetic behavior is only obtained in the
fabric plane. As the geometrical structures of these fabrics
are not symmetrical structures and the yarn arrangements are
different in each direction, auxetic behavior of the fabrics
should be different when changing tensile direction. For easy
discussion of the auxetic effect in different tensile directions,
only the testing results of Fabric C are presented here as an
example. Its Poisson’s ratio values as a function of the tensile
Figure 5 Points marked on auxetic fabric: (a) before tension; (b)
under tension.
www.pss-b.com

Phys. Status Solidi B 251, No. 2 (2014)
Figure 6 Variations of Poisson’s ratio values as a function of
tensile strain when stretched in different fabric plane directions.
strain in the weft, warp, and diagonal directions are shown in
Fig. 6, respectively. From Fig. 6, the following phenomena
can be observed: (a) auxetic behavior of the fabric can be
achieved along all the fabric plane directions in a large range
of strain; (b) the highest auxetic effect is obtained when
stretched in the weft direction, and the lowest auxetic effect
is obtained when stretched in the warp direction. The auxetic
effect when stretched in the diagonal direction is between
them; (c) the auxetic effect decreases with increase of the
tensile strain in all directions. This means that when the
tensile strain in a direction exceeds a critical value, the fabric
becomes non-auxetic. These results clearly show that the
auxetic behavior of the fabric depends on both tensile
direction and value of tensile strain.
From Fig. 2, it is possible to explain why the fabric has
different auxetic behavior in different tensile directions. As
shown in Fig. 2a, when stretched in the weft direction, the
short ribs tend to rotate to the tensile direction and the long
ribs tend to rotate to the transversal direction. As the rotation
of the long ribs can lead to a large expansion in the transverse
direction, the highest auxetic effect is obtained when
stretched in the weft direction. Conversely, as shown in
Fig. 2b, when stretched in the warp direction, the short ribs
rotate a little to the transversal direction and the long ribs
rotate to the tensile direction. As the rotation of the short ribs
can only cause a small expansion in the transversal direction,
the lowest auxetic value is obtained when stretched in the
warp direction. As shown in Fig. 2c, when stretched in the
diagonal direction, half of the long ribs are parallel to the
tensile direction, and the other half of the long ribs rotate to
the transverse direction. Therefore, the auxetic effect is
higher than that when stretched in the warp direction, and is
lower than that when stretched in the weft direction.
3.2 Effect of geometrical parameters There is no
doubt that the geometrical parameters will affect the auxetic
behavior of auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics. As
explained above, the parameters of the geometrical structure
include the lengths of the short and long ribs l1, l2 and their
www.pss-b.com
Original
Paper
285
ratio r as well as the angle u formed between them. In order to
compare the effect of the angle u, three fabrics with the same
lengths of short and long ribs, but with three different u
values (75, 65, and 558) were fabricated. As shown in
Table 1, these are Fabric A, Fabric B, and Fabric C. The
variation of the Poisson’s ratio of these fabrics as a function
of tensile strain when stretched in the weft, warp, and
diagonal directions are shown in Fig. 7, respectively. It can
be seen that the effect of u on auxetic behavior of the fabrics
when stretched in the weft direction is much higher than that
stretched in the other two directions, and the fabric with a
lower u value has a higher auxetic effect in this direction.
Therefore, Fabric C has the highest auxetic effect and Fabric
A has the lowest auxetic effect. This is normal because the
smaller the angle u, the closer the fabric structure. When a
tension is applied to the fabric, the closer fabric structure will
have more opening effect, which leads to a higher auxetic
effect.
Besides u, the effect of the rib lengths is also discussed
here. To facilitate the comparison, the ratio of the rib length r
is kept unchanged. As shown in Table 1, Fabric C and Fabric
D have the same angle u and the same ratio of rib lengths r, so
that they have the similar geometrical configurations.
However, their rib lengths are different. The short rib and
long rib lengths of Fabric C are double those of Fabric D.
Due to the limitation of knitting process, these two fabrics
with different rib lengths but with the similar geometrical
configurations were knitted on two warp knitting machines
with different machine gauges which require using different
finenesses of yarns. That leads to the different stiffness of
ribs in two fabrics. Therefore, the ribs of Fabric C are stiffer
than those of Fabric D since the yarns used for Fabric C are
thicker than those used for Fabric D. Figure 8 shows a
comparison of auxetic behavior of two fabrics. For ease of
showing the results, the curves of the Poisson’s ratio as a
function of tensile strain in each tensile direction are
separately presented in each figure. It can be seen that the
trends of the curves are very similar, especially in the
diagonal direction; the curves of two fabrics are very close,
indicating that they have almost the same auxetic behavior in
this direction. Since two fabrics have the similar geometrical
configuration, they are expected to have the similar auxetic
behavior in all directions. However, a considerable
difference is found at the initial stage of extension in the
weft direction. This may come from the different stiffness of
ribs in two fabrics. As the ribs of Fabric C are stiffer than
those of Fabric D, they more easily rotate at the initial stage
of extension in the weft direction, which leads to a higher
auxetic behavior of Fabric C than that of Fabric D at this
stage.
3.3 Auxetic behavior under repeating tensile
conditions One of the problems to be encountered by an
auxetic fabric is the loss of its auxetic behavior under
repeating tensile conditions due to imperfect elasticity of
textile materials. That will affect its performance during
repeated uses. In order to understand how an auxetic warp-
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
 pss b

solidi
physica

status
286 Z. Wang and H. Hu: 3D auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics

Figure 8 Effect of rib lengths on auxetic behavior: (a) stretched in

weft direction; (b) stretched in warp direction; (c) stretched in
diagonal direction.

knitted spacer fabric can keep its auxetic behavior, a

Figure 7 Effect of angle u on auxetic behavior: (a) stretched in
weft direction; (b) stretched in warp direction; (c) stretched in
diagonal direction.
repeating tensile test was carried out on Fabric C. The results
are shown in Fig. 9. As the auxetic behavior is low when
extended in the warp direction, only the curves of the
Poisson’s ratio as a function of tensile strain extended in the
weft and diagonal tensile directions are presented in Fig. 9.
The tensile cycles are 10. For each tensile cycle, the fabric
was first extended to 25% deformation related to its initial

ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.pss-b.com


Phys. Status Solidi B 251, No. 2 (2014)
Figure 9 Auxetic behavior under repeating tensile conditions: (a)
stretched in weft direction; (b) stretched in diagonal direction.
state at a speed of 30 mm min1 and kept at this deformation
for 2 s, and then released to its initial position with the same
speed and kept for 10 s at this position. A pre-tension of
0.2 N was applied when each cycle started. As the Poisson’s
ratio values are not constant with regard to tensile strain, the
Poisson’s ratio values obtained at 5, 10, and 25% of tensile
strains were selected. The results show that auxetic behavior
of the fabric will tend to be stabilized after the second tensile
test. The big change is from the first tensile cycle to the
second one. However, about 65% of the auxetic effect is still
kept after the ten tensile cycles. This result suggests that the
retention of the auxetic effect of an auxetic fabric is very
important. The solution to increase the retention ability of
auxetic behavior of a spacer fabric may use yarns with high
elastic recovery ability to knit face fabric layers.
3.4 Shape fitting ability One of the advantages of
auxetic fabrics over conventional fabrics is their excellent
shape fitting ability on a curved surface due to the formation
of synclastic curvature under bending condition. This is very
important for the fabrics to be molded into different shapes
for garments or composite parts. In order to check this shape
www.pss-b.com
Original
Paper
287
Figure 10 Shape fitting ability of spacer fabrics: (a) conventional;
(b) auxetic.
fitting ability, both non-auxetic and auxetic warp-knitted
fabrics were placed on a spherical surface formed with a
diameter of 100 mm. The results are shown in Fig. 10. It can
be seen that the auxetic fabric perfectly covers the spherical
surface due to the formation of the dome shape. That
indicates that the auxetic fabric has much better shape fitting
ability than conventional spacer fabric which has a saddle
shape.
4 Conclusions Various 3D spacer auxetic fabrics
were fabricated using warp knitting technology based on
a novel geometrical structure formed with parallelograms.
The auxetic behavior of these fabrics was discussed in terms
of tensile direction, geometrical parameter, and repeating
extension. Their shape fitting ability was also demonstrated.
Some conclusions can be drawn from this work:
(1) The proposed geometrical structure can produce the
auxetic effect in all the fabric plane directions and can be
easily knitted into a 3D fabric based on a warp-knitted
spacer structure.
(2) The auxetic behavior of these fabrics depends on the
tensile direction and value of tensile strain. The highest
auxetic effect is obtained when stretched in the weft
direction, and the lowest auxetic effect is obtained when
stretched in the warp direction. The auxetic behavior
decreases with increase of the tensile strain.
(3) The geometrical parameters have an obvious affect on
the auxetic behavior. The closer fabric structure will
have the higher auxetic effect.
(4) The auxetic behavior will tend to be stabilized after the
second tensile cycle. An auxetic fabric can still keep
about 65% of its auxetic effect after 10 cycles of
extension.
(5) The auxetic fabrics have an excellent shape fitting
ability. This ability makes them very attractive for
various applications where shape fitting is highly
required.
Acknowledgment We gratefully acknowledge the financial
support from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region Government in form a GRF project (grant
no. 518109).
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
 pss b
solidi
physica
status
288
References
[1] A. Alderson and K. Alderson, Tech. Textiles Int. 14, 29–34
(2005).
[2] Z. Y. Ge, H. Hu, and Y. P. Liu, Smart Mater. Struct. 22,
084005 (2013).
[3] Y. P. Liu and H. Hu, Sci. Res. Essays 5(10), 1052–1063
(2010).
[4] K. L. Alderson, A. Alderson, G. Smart, V. R. Simkins, and
P. J. Davies, Plast. Rubber Compos. 31(8), 344–349 (2002).
[5] N. Ravirala, K. L. Alderson, P. J. Davies, V. R. Simkins, and
A. Alderson, Text. Res. J. 76(7), 540–546 (2006).
[6] N. Ravirala, A. Alderson, K. L. Alderson, and P. J. Davies,
Phys. Status Solidi B 242(3), 653–664 (2005).
[7] M. R. Sloan, J. R. Wright, and K. E. Evans, Mech. Mater.
43(9), 476–486 (2011).
[8] J. R. Wright, M. R. Sloan, and K. E. Evans, J. Appl. Phys. 108,
044905 (2010).
[9] K. L. Alderson, A. Alderson, S. Anand, V. Simkins, S.
Nazare, and N. Ravirala, Phys. Status Solidi B 249(7), 1322–
1329 (2012).
ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Z. Wang and H. Hu: 3D auxetic warp-knitted spacer fabrics
[10] W. Miller, P. B. Hook, C. W. Smith, X. Wang, and
K. E. Evans, Compos. Sci. Technol. 69(5), 651–655
(2009).
[11] W. Miller, Z. Ren, C. W. Smith, and K. E. Evans, Compos.
Sci. Technol. 72, 761–766 (2012).
[12] Y. P. Liu, H. Hu, J. K. C. Lam, and S. Liu, Text. Res. J. 80(9),
856–863 (2010).
[13] H. Hu, Z. Y. Wang, and S. Liu, Text. Res. J. 81(14), 1493–
1502 (2011).
[14] S. C. Ugbolue, Y. K. Kim, S. B. Warner, Q. Fan, C. L. Yang,
K. Olena, and Y. Feng, J. Text. Inst. 101(7), 660–667
(2010).
[15] S. C. Ugbolue, Y. K. Kim, S. B. Warner, Q. Fan, C. L. Yang,
K. Olena, and Y. Feng, J. Text. Inst. 102(5), 424–433
(2011).
[16] Z. Y. Ge and H. Hu, Text. Res. J. 83(5), 543–550
(2013).
[17] H. Hu, 3D negative Poisson’s ratio spacer fabrics and relevant
fabrication method, Patent application no: 201210047717.2,
international application no: PCT/CN2012/081390.
www.pss-b.com