Concept design
You are tasked with designing a concept antistatic woven polyester car seat fabric. Feel free to use any technology as long as it is not potentially harmful to users. The product should also provide at least 20 years of service time. What do you recommend? Appropriate considerations should be made.
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In order to make the fabric antistatic its electrical conductivity needs improvement. This can be accomplished in many different ways. The ready-made upholstery may be treated with an antistatic finishing treatment. However, it may be difficult to accomplish good adhesion between the fabric and finishing agent that ensures high durability. A finishing treatment may also reduce wicking and permeability of the fabric that compromises comfort properties.
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Another way is to incorporate electrically conducting yarns in the weaves by i) ready-made conducting yarns or ii) spinning blended polyester and conducting staple fibre yarns or iii) by adding a conducting monofilament or multifilament in the core of the polyester yarn or iv) winding a conducting mono- or multifilament around a polyester yarn.
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These four options offer pros and cons. In all cases tensile behaviour mismatch has to be assessed and if it is considerable it needs to be managed.
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It is particularly sensitive if a stiff mono- or multifilament is put in the core of the yarn since it will make it much stiffer than the pure polyester staple fibre yarn. Hence the weave will be much less flexible than the reference weave. It is also difficult for the core filaments to form a conducting grid since the sheath staple fibres isolate them from one another. These considerations more or less disqualify option iii).
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Option i) with electrically conducting yarn is challenging in terms of stiffness matching and weave design to accomplish a fabric that resembles the reference weave.
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When it comes to option ii) the fibre diameters need matching to get a smooth yarn and the fraction of conducting fibres can probably be around 20% to reach the percolation threshold where both the yarn and the fabric reaches conductivity. Here modest stiffness mismatch should not be a big issue since the yarn twist will mitigate its effects.
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For option iv) the big issue is probably whether the winded outer conductor can be visibly hidden and if there is a risk for it to be grabbed by or hooked up on objects that may injure it and reduce the conductivity of the upholstery.
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In summary, I would make demonstrators of concepts ii) and iv) since they have the best chance of creating weaves that resemble the reference upholstery. The most durable option is concept ii) where the conducting fibres are embedded and thereby also well protected. If I could find conducting staple fibres of relevant titer, made conducting e.g. by incorporation of TiO2 during compounding, this would be my first option.
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Project
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