Department of Textile Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is organizing an International Conference on Technical Textiles and Nonwovens from 11-13 November, 2010 at IIT Delhi. Textiles are everywhere in modern society; worn for protection and self expression on the human body, used as decoration and comfort elements in homes, offices, hospitals, hotels or public buildings.

Textiles are also used in a large number of technical applications such as interior components in cars, buses, trains, ships and airplanes, as structural elements for tents, roofs, bridges, as reinforcements for roads, as bags, nets, artificial turf in sports etc. In most of these applications, technical performance and functional characteristics are extremely important.

Technical textiles account for over one-quarter of all textile consumption in weight terms. The growth rate of technical textiles is higher than that of apparel or home textiles and major strides have been made in recent years in the development of raw materials, processing technologies, finishing techniques and evaluation standards for technical textiles.

Nonwovens are no doubt among the most promising textile products of the past 2 decades. They are not only replacing traditional textiles, but are also creating new markets for new products. Nonwovens are most widely used in diverse applications of technical textiles due to their unique characteristics, performance and cost advantage.

With the sustained and rapid economic and social growth in Asia, the development of the nonwovens industry has been pushed forward rapidly in many countries on the Asia-Pacific. Analysts have predicted there will be unlimited prospects for the market of nonwoven materials in many applications over the next decade. China and India have extremely good potential markets for nonwovens equipment, machinery as well as nonwoven products.

The conference, fourth in the series of the International Conferences on Technical Textiles and Nonwovens, organized by the Textile Department aims to bring together industry, research organizations and academia involved in the field of technical textiles and have meaningful discussions on the existing technical textile products, new product development possibilities, current issues, domestic and global market potentials for these products and finally to come up with suitable strategy for the development of technical textiles in India.

While industries stand to benefit from new scientific information and data exchange in the international platform, participants from research organizations and academic institutions would enrich themselves from current state of research in the field of technical textiles and to identify the focus areas for R&D and develop appropriate technology and innovative products.

The areas of the papers to be presented and discussed will be on design aspects, recent manufacturing technologies, structure-property relationship for various functional and technical textile products including technical yarns, woven, knitted, braided and nonwovens products. There would be invited talks on recent areas like photochromic textiles, speciality fibres, spacer fabrics and processing. Application areas would include geotech, indutech, medtech, mobiltech, protech and sporttech.
 
The conference would deal with oral papers and poster presentation from different sectors of technical textiles. Special sessions would have invited speakers deliberating on Protective, Medical, Composites, Nonwoven products and Machineries.

Out of 50 oral papers, 20 are from industrial participants and 30 papers are from academic institutions, research organizations, consultants and Government of India participants. Nearly 45 poster papers will also be presented. An exhibition has also been organized as a part of this conference and will be open on all three days of the conference.

The conference has received enthusiastic support from Government of India organizations, industry sponsors, speakers and delegates. The conference will provide a major impetus to the development and growth of nascent technical textiles and nonwovens industries in India and serve as a major platform for interaction between all the stake holders in the future of these important technological areas of textiles.