PVC-based synthetic leather to provide more comfortable and sustainable vehicles

Consumers are increasingly demanding the interior of cars to be comfortable even in the case of more economic commercial segments. Thus, the development of materials with thermoregulation properties has assumed renewed interest for these particular applications. An attempt has been made to prepare a multilayer PVC-based synthetic leather with paraffinic PCMs to be applied on a car seat. The thermal behaviour of the material was analysed using Alambeta apparatus, a thermo-camera and a thermal manikin. The results obtained show that the synthetic leather with incorporated PCMs gives cooler feeling and has higher reaction times regarding environmental temperature variations than the material without PCMs incorporation. Globally, the new designed material allowed greater thermal comfort to the cars' inhabitants. In addition, the material quality was evaluated according to the standard of the customer, BMW 9,210,275; Edition / Version 4, 2010-10-01 revealing that the material meets all the requirements under test, except for the performance in terms of flexibility.