Evaluation for Long-Term Structural Shading Materials for Use in Harsh Environments

Abstract

This paper evaluated the performance and durability of leading structural shading materials to be used in the Super Containerized Living Units (Super-CLU’s) project. Fifteen unique shading fabrics were tested in five different experiments in order to evaluate their strength, resistance to wind, abrasion, and heat and to assess their heat transmissivity and breathability. A current United States Navy material was used as a control material for the evaluation of the other tested materials. Samples of each fabric were first tensile tested in both their warp and weft orientation to create an ‘as-received’ baseline condition. Then, additional samples of each fabric were exposed to wind, abrasion, or heat and subsequently tensile tested in order to show the degradation in tensile strength as compared to the as-received samples. The heat transmissivity and breathability testing was conducted separately.