Measurement of Static Electricity Generated from Contact and Separation of Clothes and Car Seat Covers

Measurement of static electricity is of critical importance in assessing the proper electric properties of car seat covers and their suitability to be used in application to enhance the safety and stability of the driver. The present work aims to measure the static electric charge generated from the contact and separation of materials used as car seat covers and clothes. Different materials of car seat covers and clothes were tested to measure the voltage generated from electric static charge .It was found that voltage generated by the contact and separation of the tested upholstery materials of car seat covers against the materials of clothes showed great variance according to the type of the materials. The materials tested showed different trend with increasing load. The contact and separation of the tested against polyamide textiles generated negative voltage, where voltage increased down to minimum then decreased with increasing load. The behaviour can be interpreted on the fact that as the load increased the two rubbed surfaces, charged by free electrons, easily exchanged the electrons of dissimilar charges where the resultant became relatively lower voltage. High density polyethylene displayed relatively lower voltage than cotton and polyamide textiles, while polypropylene textiles displayed relatively higher voltage than that shown for high density polyethylene. The variance of the voltage with load was much pronounced. Voltage generated from polyester textiles showed reasonable values. Remarkable voltage increase was observed for contacting synthetic rubber. This observation can limit the application of synthetic rubber in tailoring clothes.Based on the experimental results the materials of car seat covers can be classified according to their electric properties. Materials of high static electricity can be avoided and new materials of low static electricity can be recommended. Keywords-Electric static charge, voltage, cotton, polyester, textiles, upholstery materials, car seat covers, triboelectrification ————————————————————