Development and performance optimization of polyurethane-based multifunctional coatings using Taguchi method

Inducing multifunctionality is the need of the products used in diverse environments. Here, polyurethane-based water repellent, flame retardant and antibacterial coatings are fabricated on cotton fabrics which sequentially involve the deposition of coating through knife coating, drying and curing of coated fabric. Taguchi design has been used to optimize the parameters for enhanced water repellency, flame retardancy and antibacterial activity. When applied individually, the performance characteristics enhance with the increase in concentration of respective finishing agent. However, a different behaviour was shown by the coated fabric when applied all the finishing agents simultaneously. Taguchi design enabled the monitoring of interdependency of different concentrations of chemicals and finding the most influencing parameters for efficient performance of coated fabrics.