Mechanically robust and highly stretchable woven fabric containing metal wire for personal protective clothing

Highly stretchable composite yarns containing metal wire have attracted great interest as a fundamental building block for special protective fields. A method for producing tri-component elastic-conductive composite yarns (t-ECCYs) has been described previously. The main purpose of this work was to investigate the mechanical behavior and structural stability of a highly stretchable woven fabric containing t-ECCYs inserted in its weft direction. By virtue of the unique structure of t-ECCYs, the woven fabric has a denser and tighter surface than the reference fabric (100% cotton), which facilitates its weft elastic stretchability in excess of 40%. Furthermore, a typical initial low-stress tensile curve characteristic and an acceptable cyclic elastic recovery stability at a higher strain of 25% were observed, indicating excellent mechanical robustness of as-prepared woven fabric. Also, a modified standard solid model by introducing an exponent to the exponential function can fairly well replicate the tensile characteristics during stretch. Importantly, the structural stability of the fabric remained nearly unchanged following cyclic expansion (≈43%) and washing-drying (10 times) cycles. It is promising that this kind of mechanically robust and highly stretchable woven fabric containing metal wire is prerequisite for the next wave of superelastic electromagnetic shielding materials.