Development of uni-stretch woven fabrics with zero and negative Poisson's ratio

Fabrics with zero or negative Poisson's ratio are referred as auxetic fabrics, which have the unusual property of lateral expansion or zero expansion upon stretch. The use of conventional materials and machinery to produce auxetic fabrics has gained the interest of researchers in recent years. However, this approach is limited to knitted fabrics only. The development of auxetic fabric using conventional yarns and weaving technology is a research area that is still unaddressed. This paper reports a study on the development of a novel class of stretchable auxetic woven fabrics by using conventional yarns and weaving machinery. The phenomenon of differential shrinkage was successfully employed to realize auxetic geometries capable of inducing auxetic behavior in woven fabrics, and a series of auxetic woven fabrics were fabricated with elastic and non-elastic yarns and a dobby machine. The uni-axial tensile tests showed that auxetic woven fabrics developed exhibited zero or negative Poisson's ratio over a wide range of longitudinal strain.