Gulsah Pamuk

Research on the Breaking and Tearing Strengths and Elongation of Automobile Seat Cover Fabrics

The automotive industry is a major customer of the technical textiles market. In this industry, seat covers are the most important application area of technical textiles. As the customer demands increase and competition among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) becomes more intense, the test standards for technical textiles are gradually being raised and becoming more thorough. Higher breaking and tearing strengths and breaking elongation are specifications required for advanced seat covers. It is a fact that deficiencies in these specifications have some effect on field returns (the return of failed cars to field service), raising costs and loss of confidence in the product and the producer. This paper investigates breaking and tearing strengths, and breaking elongation performances of the technical textiles used for automobile seat covers. The fabrics used in this research were supplied from seat cover fabric manufacturers who produce these fabrics for multinational automotive companies. The data obtained from the tests are evaluated statistically. The results indicate that flat woven and woven velour seat cover fabrics are the best in terms of breaking and tearing strength performances. Circular knitted automobile seat cover fabrics give the greatest elongation measures.

Manufacturing of Weft-Knitted Fabric Reinforced Composite Materials: A Review

Textile composites are composed of textile reinforcements combined with a binding matrix. The available textile reinforcements are manufactured by weaving, braiding, knitting and stitching. Since the studies about weft-knitted composites began then these materials have attracted increasing attention because of their potential uses and advantages. As a basis for understanding the steps in manufacturing of weft-knitted reinforced materials, this research will be helpful as it provides information on the characteristics, specifications, manufacturing process and performance of weft-knitted fabric reinforced composites.

Development of tubular knitted fabric-reinforced composite pipes

In literature, there exist many investigations about the application of knitted textiles as a reinforcement material in composites. Although majority of them are mainly centered on flat plates, tubular knitted fabric is used in current study to develop composite pipes. Produced composite pipes are subjected to axial compression before and after 5J impact test. Force–time and force–displacement curves are obtained, and compression stress is calculated according to wall thicknesses of the pipes. It is observed that the interlacing of yarns in knitted tubular fabric through the thickness direction increases the splitting toughness of composite pipes. Although the compression failure takes place as buckling in both nonimpacted and impacted composite pipes, damage propogation in the transverse direction is not observed. The results of the study are presented in detail.

Mechanical properties of spacer fabric-reinforced composites knitted from glass yarn:

In this study, to investigate the tensile, compression, and impact strengths of weft-knitted spacer fabric-reinforced composites made from glass yarn, first the glass yarn was knitted on industrial flat knitting machine and two types of spacer preforms were produced. Then, mechanical tests were applied to examine the strengths of the composites manufactured from spacer preforms. As a result, it is concluded that making tuck stitches in short and long needles improves locking of upper and lower layers of the spacer fabric; also the minority of crossover points in the second type of the spacer fabric generate a very stiff and high strength spacer fabric preform.