Development of thin-walled fibre-reinforced structures for medical applications

There is a need in biomedical engineering for thin-walled, high-performance structures, which could be used as catheters, or as replacement implants in the body. This paper investigates the basic issues associated with filament winding of thin-walled structures, in which an ultra-thin layer (<0.05 mm) reinforcing material is wound onto a polymer tube. Current techniques such as over-braiding of stainless steel and carbon fibre have difficulties producing a wall thickness below about 0.1 mm with high volume fractions. This process will involve filament winding of thin layers of aramid with polymer matrices. These layers are wound onto a continuously moving extruded inner polymer core and the wound structure will be over-coated using over-extrusion and dipping techniques. The adhesion between the fibre and matrix will be investigated. The objective is to produce high-performance thin-walled polymer structures whose properties are designed, or tailored to the particular application.