Tear resistance of woven textiles – Criterion and mechanisms

The resistance to tearing of textiles is an important characteristic of materials, especially for fabrics used in personal protective equipment. In this project, work has been done to develop a criterion for textile structures based on the tearing energy. Tongue tear and tensile central crack tear tests were performed on plain and twill woven fabrics made of cotton, polyester/cotton blend and polyester. The tearing energy was computed from the variation of the work as a function of the tear crack surface area. Results show that for the two types of studied weaves, the tearing energy G is independent of the sample configuration. This tearing energy criterion was used to study the effect of fabrics linear density, yarn density and weave on their tearing performance. It also provided evidence of the occurrence of an additional phenomenon in the tongue tear mechanism, i.e. the sliding of transverse yarns in addition to the already reported sliding of longitudinal yarns. This tearing energy criterion appears as a valuable tool for the in-depth study of the tearing resistance of woven textiles.