Synthetic upholstery leather made of PVC is an extremely attractively priced, very high-quality material with a broad range of applications in the vehicle interior. Only in the area of the seat side bolster can field failures occur which go beyond reliability limits in the ppm range. This paper describes the causes of this so-called synthetic leather failure as well as remedial measures. Firstly, imitation leather itself should be developed further. Improvements can be validated by a test method newly developed by BMW which simulates synthetic leather failure even with the material in sheet form. Secondly, however, the other system elements of the seat should also be optimized. Alternatively, materials known not to crack should be used.
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