**3. How does an engineered fabric differ from technical fabrics?**

The engineered fabrics are used as raw material to serve various segments of technical textiles viz., agrotech, buildtech, cosmetotextiles, clothtech, hometech, indutech, mobiltech, sportech, packtech, meditech, protech, and others. The automobile textiles (mobiltech) segment is demanding highest amount of engineered fabrics followed by industrial textiles (Indutech). Various types of engineered fabrics like spacer fabrics, multilayer fabrics, needle punched nonwoven fabrics, melt blown nonwoven fabrics and warp knitted fabrics are highly

The engineered fabrics are able to cater the needs of wide spectrum of present market starts from awnings, airbags, automobile filters, floor covering, fabrics used in erosion suppression, hoses, road construction, safety belts, thermal and sound insulation and upholstery, etc. Engineered fabric manufacturing industry is already established in strong position in China, India, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. The engineered fabric market is continued to grow in coming years also. The growth of automobile, industrial sector and infrastructure sector are the major driving forces for engineered fabrics [6]. Being the world's second largest producer of textiles and apparel, India's engineered fabrics manufacturing sector is also growing at fast rate and creating both direct and indirect employment. The textile and garment industry is the root of Indian economy which provided employment to 105 million citizens. Indian textile industry will grow up to \$223 billion by 2021 in which engineered fabric's sector will play major role. High transportation and energy cost and lack of labor reforms are some major hurdles in traditional Indian textile industry which force to shift its focus from conventional textile to engineered textiles. Export of engineered textiles is increasing with annual growth rate of 18%. Now, Government of India developed new policies for rapid growth of industry which will make remarkable change in engineered textiles. There are few steps taken to pro-

• Market development support to stabilize both domestic and international markets

The Engineered fabrics are defined as "The fabrics which are produced by some modified fabric manufacturing techniques than conventional for unconventional engineering applications". Various critics and scientists will coin some other definitions in future also but the basic theme of engineered fabric may remain unchanged. Basically the engineered fabrics covers the 2D, 3D fabrics, belts, braided items, aerospace automotive textiles, industrial tex-

• Implementation of uniform goods and service tax across the country

• Establishing standards for various types of engineered fabrics.

demanded by various sectors of technical textiles [5].

mote the engineered fabric manufacturing in India.

• Exemption in custom duty for raw materials

tiles, high performance textiles, etc. [7, 8].

• Investment promotion

2 Engineered Fabrics

**2. Definition**

Since decades of years technical textiles was widely used to explain the unconventional textiles which includes bunch of fibers, ropes, cabled yarns, woven and nonwoven fabrics, finished fabrics, stitched textiles, etc. The term technical textiles is used to encompass all textile products other than those intended for apparel, household and furnishing enduses, however, the term "engineered fabrics" is limited to various woven, nonwoven, knitted and braided fabrics manufactured by some unorthodox manufacturing techniques for special engineering applications. Various fabrics engineered for specific applications like medical, hygiene, sporting, transportation, construction, agricultural and many other purposes [10].

Engineered fabrics are used to provide the base for filters, machine clothing, conveyor belts, abrasive substrates, geofabrics, fabrics for acoustic and thermal insulation, etc. It is essential to mention that the composite materials made of polymeric membrane as reinforcing material with matrices, highly loose structured materials such as chopped strand mat, milled glass and pulped organic fibers cannot become the part of engineering fabrics [11].
