The definition of technical
textiles adopted by the authoritative Textile Terms and Definitions, published
by the Textile Institute1, is ‘textile materials and products manufactured
primarily for their technical and performance properties rather than their
aesthetic or decorative characteristics’.
Such a brief description
clearly leaves considerable scope for interpretation, especially when an
increasing number of textile products are combining both performance and
decorative properties and functions in equal measure. Examples are flame
retardant furnishings and ‘breathable’ leisurewear. Indeed, no two published sources,
industry bodies or statistical organizations ever seem to adopt precisely the same
approach when it comes to describing and categorizing specific products and applications
as technical textiles.
It is perhaps not surprising
that any attempt to define too closely and too rigidly the scope and content of
technical textiles and their markets is doomed to failure. In what is one of
the most dynamic and broad ranging areas of modern textiles, materials,
processes, products and applications are all changing too rapidly to define and
document. There are even important linguistic and cultural perceptions of what constitutes
a technical textile from geographical region to region in what is now a global
industry and marketplace.
Technical
or industrial textiles: what’s in a name?
For many years, the term
‘industrial textiles’ was widely used to encompass all textile products other
than those intended for apparel, household and furnishing end-uses. It is a
description still more widely favoured in the USA than in Europe and elsewhere
(see, for example, the Wellington Sears Handbook of Industrial Textiles).
This usage has seemed
increasingly inappropriate in the face of developing applications of textiles
for medical, hygiene, sporting, transportation, construction, agricultural and
many other clearly non-industrial purposes. Industrial textiles are now more
often viewed as a subgroup of a wider category of technical textiles, referring
specifically to those textile products used in the course of manufacturing
operations (such as filters, machine clothing, conveyor belts, abrasive
substrates etc.) or which are incorporated into other industrial products (such
as electrical components and cables, flexible seals and diaphragms, or acoustic
and thermal insulation for domestic and industrial appliances).
If this revised definition of
industrial textiles is still far from satisfactory, then the problems of
finding a coherent and universally acceptable description and classification of
the scope of technical textiles are even greater. Several schemes have been proposed.
For example, the leading international trade exhibition for technical textiles,
Techtextil (organised biennially since the late 1980s by Messe Frankfurt in
Germany and also in Osaka, Japan), defines 12 main application areas (of which textiles
for industrial applications represent only one group):
• agrotech: agriculture, aquaculture, horticulture and forestry
• buildtech: building and construction
• clothtech: technical components of footwear and clothing
• geotech: geotextiles and civil engineering
•hometech: technical components of furniture, household textiles and
floorcoverings
• indutech: filtration, conveying, cleaning and other industrial uses
• medtech: hygiene and medical
• mobiltech: automobiles, shipping, railways and aerospace
• oekotech: environmental protection
• packtech: packaging
• protech: personal and property protection
• sporttech: sport and leisure.
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