Textile Composites for Seat Upholstery

Textile for seat upholstery is a part of wide field of Mobiltech. It is very important segment of the visual identity of a vehicle, so its design, along with other high set requirements, is of the utmost importance. Textiles for seat upholstery are subject to many challenges; therefore, some of the required properties are resistance to stress, abrasion, UV radiation, external temperature and humidity, static electricity and peeling, as well as offering safety and comfort. For cladding car seat construction with textile, individual cutting parts of the fabric are joined by seam, and this part usually has the lowest mechanical properties. Therefore, in designing seat upholstery, the focus needs to be on these material segments. The function of the seam is to provide uniform transmission of loads between two joined materials and keep their integrity, which is not completely possible with stitched seam. Therefore, the material behaviour in places of sewn seam, the impact of the needlepoint and needle type on the strength, the appearance and seam quality will be discussed. Since the textile composites for seat upholstery are exposed to the multi-cyclical stress on certain areas, a part of this chapter will be focused precisely on that field