Influence of seam slippage on the stab resistance of woven structures for membranes

The stab resistance of textiles and membranes is a very important property for several areas. For many applications, which are used in the protection area, aramid woven structures are normally used. A main problem of these panels is the missing yarn friction, whichleads to a high yarn slippage. It allows a knife or another sharp blade to penetrate the fabric, because the yarns slide apart. One solution is to reduce the slippage of the yarns during the penetration through the knife and resultant of this effect a higher absorbing of the impact energy. To determine the influence of this effect, fourdifferent woven aramidstructures with different properties and pattern, were tested against shift by determining the seam slippage by using the fixed seam opening method. Due to this, the behaviourof stab resistance of the different aramid fabrics were tested according to theVPAM test instruction “Stab-and impact protection”. The interdependence betweenthe yarn slippage and the stab penetration was tested. A better understanding of this process allows improving fabrics for membranes against stab attacks in future.