ABSTRACT
With the rapid development of technical textiles, more and more researchers have focused on developing high performance textiles to meet various needs. The automotive industry is a major market for technical textiles. Compared to other types of fabric, weft-knitted fabric has good extensibility and elasticity, as well as a hand-feel, and it is gradually becoming the preferred type of interior fabric for automobiles. This paper aims to develop an automotive fabric with good comfort and durability. Sixteen types of weft-knitted fabrics with eight different structures and two different materials (draw textured polyester and textured polyamide yarn) were fabricated using a computerized flat knitting machine. Their durability and level of comfort were examined by measuring the tensile and tear strengths, abrasion resistance and air permeability. A fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was employed to compare the comprehensive properties of the fabric. The results indicated that the overall performance of DTPA fabric was better than DTPE fabric, and an optimum structure was selected for an automotive interior. Meanwhile, we found that the air permeability of the fabric could be increased by using tuck stitches and that the strength and dimensional stability of fabric could be increased by adding tuck stitches and weft-insert yarns. The findings contribute to the field of technical textiles and provide ideas for the development of high-performance textiles.
ABSTRACT
Recently, more and more researchers have focused on electrical textiles that can provide or convert energy to facilitate people's lives. Knitting conductive yarns into ordinary fabrics is a common way for electrical textiles to transmit heat or electrical signals to humans. This paper is aimed at studying the resistance values and temperatures of electrothermal knitted conductive fabric (EKCF) subjected to certain voltages over time. Six types of EKCFs with structural differences were fabricated using a computerized flat knitting machine with intarsia technology. Uniform samples 10 × 10 cm in size were made from wool, as were two different specifications of silver-coated conductive yarns. The wool yarn and one silver-coated yarn were mixed to knit a resistance area 2 × 2 cm in size in the center of the EKCF to observe heating behaviors. The experiment results showed that when the EKCFs were subjected to certain voltages over time, the resistance values of the resistance area increased over a short time and then gradually decreased, and the temperature gradually increased in the first 1000 s and tended toward stability after a certain period of time. The structural coefficient κ between different knitted structures (which predicted the thermal properties of different EKCFs subjected to different voltages) was analyzed. These results are of great significance for predicting the electrothermal performance of EKCFs with different knitted structures. On the basis of these results, an optimized knitted structure was selected as the best EKCF for wearable textiles, and the findings contribute to the field of technological and intelligent electrothermal garments and related products.
