Safety webbing tape: choosing the right webbing for your product

Webbing tape is often described as “a strong fabric woven into flat strips or tubes of varying widths and fibers.” Whether used as a dog leash, straps on a backpack, or a strap to fasten pants, most webbing is typically Produced from common man-made or natural materials such as nylon, polyester or cotton. As with all textiles, the choice of these fibers depends on the needs of the webbing’s end application, availability and, of course, cost.

Webbing is distinguished from other narrow fabrics (such as straps and/or trim) primarily by its greater tensile strength (the measure of the maximum force achieved when breaking a fiber or fabric), and as a result, webbing tends to be thicker and heavier. Elastic is another major category of narrow fabrics and its ability to stretch is different from other fabrics.

seat belt webbing: product applications

While all webbing, by its definition, is required to meet certain performance standards, specialty webbing is designed to push specific performance goals to levels that are too extreme for standard “commodity” webbing. These include webbing for flood control/critical infrastructure, military/defence, fire safety, load bearing/lift rigging, industrial safety/fall protection and many other applications with very stringent standards. Many or most of these fall under the category of safety webbing

Safety belt performance goals

When considering and defining performance goals for such mission-critical components, it is critical to carefully review all aspects of the end product’s application, environment, service life, and maintenance. Our R&D team utilizes exclusive, in-depth research to provide a complete narrative of all performance needs/challenges that customers may and may not expect. This is all about ultimately designing the best textile for their specific needs. Common requirements for seat belts may include (but are not necessarily limited to):

Cut resistance
Wear resistance
Fire resistance/flame retardancy
heat resistance
Arc flash resistance
chemical resistance
Hydrophobic (water/moisture resistant, including salt water)
UV resistant
Extremely high tensile strength
Creep resistance (material deforms slowly under constant stress)

Sewing webbing is the workhorse of the narrow fabric industry, and specialty safety webbing is undoubtedly the gold standard in the category. Our team of designers, engineers and technicians never stop exploring new materials and technologies to further improve performance and ensure safety. If you and/or your colleagues are looking for narrow web textile products with high physical properties, we invite you to contact us to discuss the unique challenges of your project/program.