Abstract:

In order to develop industrial fabrics capable of being used under harsh environmental conditions, ethylene-tetrafluoroethlene(ETFE) yarns were prepared from homemade ETFE filaments by twisting and combining folded yarns technologies. Then semi-automatic loom was used to weave plain fabrics. The width and thickness of as-prepared fabrics were about (300 ± 2) mm and 0.397mm, respectively. Universal tensile machine, fabric air permeability tester, flat fabric heat retention tester and abrasion tester were applied to characterize the properties of yarns and fabrics. The results shows that the gas permeability rate of ETFE fabric is 562.1 mm/s and the warmth retention rate is 6.77%. Moreover, 29.8MPa of warp-wise tensile strength, 19.7MPa of across-wise tensile strength and the equal level of wet-strength with dry-strength reveal good mechanical propertes of ETFE fabric. The thermal shrinkage of ETFE fabric achieves an obvious improvement with no shrink below 150℃ and only 6% shrinkage at the temperature of 200℃ after heat setting, showing a good temperature resistance. Moreover, mechanical properties of ETFE fabrics show no any deterioration after soaking in concentrated sulfuric acid and 90℃, respectively, showing excellent acid or alkaline resistant. As-prepared fabric has a great potential to be used under harsh environmental conditions.

Key words: ethylene-tetrafluouoethylene fabric, mechanical property, thermal shrinkage, acid and alkaline resistance