Car seat covers can help keep your vehicle looking like new and prevent damage from accidental spills, sticky fingers, and pet hair. They also protect seats from UV rays, salt, and water stains. In addition, they can slow down depreciation and give your ride a custom look that expresses your aesthetic preferences. However, the key to a good seat cover is finding the right one for your lifestyle. To do that, you should consider things like the material’s durability, how easy it is to clean and sanitize, and whether or not it can withstand harsh weather conditions.
Most seat covers are made of trilaminates consisting of a face fabric, foam layer and scrim backing. The face fabric requires attractive appearance, soil resistance and abrasion resistance, while the foam provides insulation and comfort. The scrim backing fabric controls stretch properties and dimensional stability, and it can be coated to improve fire retardancy, abrasion resistance and barrier properties (Fung & Hardcastle, 2000).
In order to meet the various requirements, seat covers are manufactured using multi-layered fabrics that combine different materials produced by a variety of methods. These materials are subjected to a series of mechanical and thermal loads even before they are used, such as heat setting into a surface material, cutting into individual components, sewing and fitting to the seat. The quality of the seams and fit of the cover on the seat is dependent upon the shrinking values that occur during these processes, and these are not always accurately predicted.