Online Characterization of Fabric Comprssional Behavior

Abstract

Response of a fabric to applied forces normal to its plane is known as fabric compressional behavior. It is one of the important properties that determine fabric performance in many applications. The principle of a system used to measure fabric compressional characteristics, online, is proposed in this paper. A controllable nip formed by a pair of rollers is employed to apply compressional deformation to a moving fabric while the compression force and displacement are continuously recorded. The influence of various system parameters on the sensitivity of the system has been analyzed. By assuming a stepwise anisotropic behavior in the thickness direction, Incremental Differential Algorithm (IDA) is developed to calculate the pressure-displacement relationship from the measured force-displacement data obtained from the online system. A prototype online measurement system has been developed based on this principle. A number of woven and nonwoven fabrics have been evaluated using the online system as well as a number of other commercially available fabric compression testers. The compressional characteristics obtained from the online measurement system compare well with the same parameters measured using the other commercially available compressional testers.