Innovative Textile Thermal Management Solutions for Automotive Interior Applications

In the automotive industry, thermal management in interior vehicle textiles is an important aspect, aimed at enhancing passenger comfort and with improved thermal efficiency to achieve low energy consumption. The main purpose of the current paper is the development of new automotive textiles with heating systems generating a “thermal bubble” concept, focusing on increasing efficiency by reducing energy consumption, through the integration of multilayered textile-based solutions. Therefore, effective thermal management is a critical aspect that requires new and enhanced technologies and processes, to transform the vehicle interior into a “third living space”. This can be accomplished by using textile-based materials considering several factors to ensure that they meet the following requirements, thermal performance and comfort, aesthetics, automotive technical specifications (i.e., delamination, moisture stability, resistance to cleaning agents, flammability, fogging, COVs, UV, heat, climatic cycles, abrasion resistance, odour, formaldehyde content, target solutions cost, reduction in energy consumption between 15 - 20% and gain in vehicle autonomy, appearance, homogeneity (since the heating system must not create hot spots on the surface and must provide a homogeneous heating area) and sustainability (recycled materials and a mono-material approach).