Analysis of the Electromagnetic Shielding Behavior of Stainless Steel Filament and PET/SS Hybrid Yarn Incorporated Conductive Woven Fabrics

An investigation was done on a stainless steel filament and stainless steel/polyester (SS/PET) fibres blended hybrid yarn incorporated conductive fabric to study the significance of SS/PET blended hybrid yarn on electromagnetic shielding when woven with SS filaments. The variations of shielding effectiveness of woven fabric with proportion of SS content, fabric density and weave structure were studied in detail. Electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (EMSE) of fabrics was measured using vector network analyzer along with coaxial transmission holder in accordance with ASTM D4935. The experiment was conducted in the frequency range of 0.3 to 1.5 GHz for all the fabrics. The experimental results showed that increase in fabric density increased the shielding effectiveness (SE) of fabric. Analysis of structure of weave revealed that twill weave has higher shielding effectiveness than plain weave which confirms the yarn float length has positive influence on shielding efficiency of fabrics. Compared to SS/PET blended hybrid yarn based fabric, higher shielding was obtained for SS filament fabric. In addition, the SE of fabric woven with SS filament and SS/PET hybrid yarn was found to be higher than the fabric with only SS filaments. ANOVA analysis was carried out to confirm the higher shielding effect of fabric made from SS/PET blended hybrid yarn and SS filament compared with SS filament woven fabric.