Effect of the viscosity of polyvinyl chloride resin and weaving structures of polyester fabric on the off-axis mechanical properties of PVC coated fabric

PVC coated fabric is a useful structural material mainly used as a roof material because of its lightweight, flexibility. However, the main issues of this PVC coated fabric product is that it is damaged such as tensile failure, peel, and tear when exposed to extreme environments such as strong rain and wind owing to its inferior mechanical properties. Various studies have been reported to improve the mechanical properties of PVC coated fabric, there have been no significant improvement. Therefore, in this study, to improve the mechanical properties of the PVC coated fabrics, applied the low viscosity PVC resin and 4 × 4 matt weave structure polyester fabric. In addition, the mechanical properties of PVC coated fabrics with various viscosity PVC resins (D10, D8, D5, D2 and D0) were investigated and the mechanical properties of PVC coated fabrics with various weaving structure such as plain weave structure (1 × 1), matt weave structure (2 × 2, 3 × 3, and 4 × 4) were studied. The PVC coated fabric fabricated by low viscosity PVC resin (D10), the tensile strength, tear load, and peel strength improved about 3%, 11%, and 29% compared to the PVC coated fabric fabricated by high viscosity PVC resin (D0). The mechanical properties of the PVC coated fabric fabricated by 4 × 4 matt weave structure polyester fabric was superior to the 1 × 1 plain weave structure polyester fabric and 2 × 2, 3 × 3 matt weave structure polyester fabrics because of the low crimp rate and low intersection point of the warp yarn and weft yarn of the fabric.