Application Of Functional Textiles In Automotive Interior Decoration

With the increasing production of automobiles, the demand for textiles has been increasing. The development of the global automotive industry has brought a wide market for automotive textiles. In the next 10 years, China's auto industry will enter a period of rapid growth, thus driving the demand for automotive textiles to increase rapidly by [1].

Automotive interior fabric is one of the new categories in the textile industry. Compared with traditional clothing textiles, it not only requires aesthetics and decoration, but also requires certain functions, and has special requirements for appearance and material. Therefore, functional textiles have entered the automotive processing industry, and the consumption is increasing year by year. The technical content and production difficulty of functional textiles are not comparable to those of ordinary textiles. They can be used as automotive interior fabrics not only to improve the comfort of products, but also to increase the added value of automobiles.

1. Classification and performance requirements of automotive interior fabrics

1.1 classification of automotive interior fabrics

The textile used in the automobile industry is mainly made of chemical fiber textiles. According to the difference of weaving methods, we divide the interior fabrics into five categories: woven fabrics are mainly used for chairs, doors, curtains, warp knitted fabrics, which are mainly used for car doors, roof tops, middle pillars and curtain knitted fabrics. They are mainly used for seats and doors. Weft knitted jacquard fabrics are mainly used for chairs and door nonwovens. They are mainly used for carpets, tops, columns and suitcases.

1.2 performance requirements for automotive interior fabrics

The main function of the interior fabric is to beautify the environment of the car body, so that the occupants can feel comfortable during the journey. Therefore, the interior fabric must have safety, comfort and environmental protection [2]. Based on these three requirements, the function of the interior fabric should comply with the requirements listed in Table 1 at least.

　　 As can be seen from table 1, the application of functional textiles in automotive interior decoration is necessary and necessary, which paved the way for the promotion of functional textiles in the automotive industry.

2. Application of functional textiles in automotive interior decoration

2.1 flame retardant textiles

The automotive interior fabrics are mainly made of chemical fiber textiles. Considering the safety performance, it is necessary to develop flame retardant textile interior fabrics. There are two ways to form flame-retardant textiles, namely, developing flame retardant fiber textiles and chemical finishing of textiles. Flame retardant fibers can be classified into two categories according to chemical fibers. One is that the fiber itself has flame retardancy, and the other is to produce flame retardant fibers by modifying the fibers, that is, flame retardant modified [3].

The flame retardant modification of precursor consists of copolymerization, blending and graft modification. Copolymerization is the introduction of compounds containing phosphorus, halogen, sulfur and other flame-retardant elements into the macromolecular chain during the synthesis of fiber forming polymers, and then the flame retardant material is added to the fiber. Blending is a method of adding flame retardants to spinning melt or spinning flame retardant fibers, especially for polymers without polar groups, such as polypropylene. Graft modification is an effective and durable flame retardant modification method by using radiation heat, high-energy electron beam or chemical initiator to graft copolymerization of fibers (or fabrics) with flame retardant monomers. The flame retardancy of graft flame retardant modified fiber is related to the type and location of the flame retardant elements in the graft monomer. The order of influence on the flame retardant effect is: core grafting, uniform grafting, surface grafting.

The flame retardant finishing is mainly on the surface treatment of the fabric in the process of textile finishing, that is, through adsorption deposition, chemical bonding, non-polar fan Edward force bonding and adhesion, the flame retardant is fixed on the fabric so as to achieve the flame retardant effect of [4].

The main forms of flame retardant finishing of fabrics are the following:

(1) pasting and baking process

This method is the most widely used in flame retardant finishing process. The technological process is: pre rolling, pre drying, baking and post treatment. Its dipping solution is a flame retardant solution, which is suitable for flame retardant finishing of cellulose fiber fabrics.

(2) immersion drying method

The process flow is: dipping drying aftertreatment. It is to immerse the fabric in the flame-retardant liquid for a certain period of time, remove it and dry it. Sometimes the flame retardant finishing can be carried out in the same bath with the dyeing process.

(3) coating method

It is to mix the flame retardant into the resin for processing. According to the difference of mechanical equipment, it can be divided into scraper coating, casting coating and rolling coating. Different products adopt different processing methods.

A) scraper coating method: mix the flame retardant slurry with a scraper directly on the fabric. Most of the flame retardants are made into solution or emulsion.

B) casting coating method: the polymer casting membrane is pressed onto the fabric. It is suitable for large scale curtain and civil engineering articles with high flame retardant content.

C) calendering coating method: making polymer film on calender, and then bonding with fabric. Generally, a mixture of PVC, PVDC and copolymer of this kind of resin and flame retardant is used.

At present, the coating method is widely applied to decorative textiles, because this method is easy to implement and has relatively good durability.

2.2 antistatic textiles

Chemical fiber products are prone to static electricity. For automobiles, interior fabrics are necessary for antistatic finishing. This is mainly based on safety considerations to prevent static electricity from hurting the human body.

There are three main ways to produce antistatic textiles: antistatic agent finishing, modified fiber yarn and mixed conductive fiber [5]. Antistatic finishing means that antistatic agents can be directly applied to fabrics by spraying and impregnating in dyeing and finishing processes. The key is to select good antistatic agents and select suitable finishing conditions. But practice has proved that the anti-static effect of most antistatic agents can not be maintained for a long time.

As long as the modified fibrils are made by blending, copolymerization, grafting modification, introducing hydrophilic polar groups, or adding antistatic agent to the polymer, the fiber itself has antistatic property.

The conductive fiber is developed by using conductive filament filament to develop antistatic fabric. The main purpose is to combine conductive filament or conductive filament with other yarns, and then insert them into fabric according to a certain density. The corona discharge produced by conductive fibers has good antistatic effect and is durable.

2.3 antifouling, oil repellent and easy decontamination textiles

As a vehicle for human beings, automobiles are inevitably stained with oil and contamination during their use. Therefore, oil and antifouling finishing of interior fabrics is essential.

Oil and antifouling is mainly through chemical finishing agents, so that stains and oil stains are not easily stained to the surface of fiber textiles; easy decontamination of textiles is through chemical finishing method to make fabrics have no affinity for stains, even stains stained to textiles, it is also very easy to remove from the surface of textiles. The prerequisites for oil and antifouling finishing must be: the surface tension of liquid stains > the critical interfacial tension of fiber [6], that is to say, when the finishing agent reduces the critical surface tension of the fiber to the surface tension of the liquid stain, the textile has the performance of oil and antifouling. The mechanism of easy decontamination is to turn the oil / fabric interface into two interfaces: Oil / water / fabric / water, so that the fabric adsorbed dirt particles can be transferred into the washing liquid [7]. It is necessary to consider the numerical value of the surface energy of the interface. It is necessary to desorb the oil surface spontaneously from the fiber surface. The surface energy of the oil / fiber interface must be larger than the surface energy of the water / fiber interface, so that the excellent oil removal ability can be obtained. The larger the difference between the surface energy of the oil / fiber interface and the water / fiber interface surface is, the better.

2.4 environmentally friendly textiles

Environmental protection is a hot topic at present. Therefore, as a vehicle interior fabric, textiles must meet the requirements of environmental protection performance. Now there are two kinds of textiles that can be selected for use. The first is the real sense of environmental textiles, that is, the use of environment-friendly textile auxiliaries and environment-friendly dyes and chemicals in the processing of textile fabrics, so that the textile meets the requirements of environmental protection standards. However, the processing control of such textiles is difficult, and the production costs and product prices are relatively high. The second is the nominal environmental textiles, mainly through adjusting the internal micro environment of the car body through some special functions of the textile itself, so as to achieve the purpose of cleaning and environmental protection.

At present, second kinds of textiles are widely used, and there are relatively many researches in this area. The main textiles developed are fragrant textiles and adsorptive odor type textiles. Aromatic textiles are mainly encapsulated by microencapsulation technology to form semi closed microcapsules. The microcapsules can be processed into textiles. Since microcapsules are semi enclosed structures, they will slowly release the fragrance of fragrance and achieve the purpose of regulating the internal micro environment of the car body. Adsorptive textiles are added to the textiles to absorb the peculiar smell substances, and constantly adsorb the peculiar smell inside the car body to the textile, so that the air in the vehicle reaches a clean state.

To sum up, functional textiles as a vehicle interior fabric have broad prospects for development. It is imperative to research and develop more and better functional textiles in the automotive industry. This is not only to improve the added value of automobile products, but also to focus on personal safety, health and convenient cleaning. At the same time, the extensive application of functional textiles has brought enormous business opportunities to the textile dyeing and finishing industry, and has also put forward higher requirements for textile dyeing and finishing workers.