Bending stress relaxation and recovery of wool, nylon 66, and terylene fibers

Abstract

AbstractThe bending stress relaxation and subsequent recovery behavior were determined for merino wool, nylon, and Terylene fibers. The effect of four experimental parameters were investigated, viz., the level of bending strain (0.5–4%), the time of stress relaxation before release (1–1000 min), the relative humidity (0–85%), and the temperature (20°–60°C). For small strains the merino and nylon fibers displayed behavior characteristic of linear viscoelastic materials, while Terylene exhibited a degree of nonrecoverable set. It was possible to construct master recovery curves for fibers held bent for different times before release. These curves can be used as a more convenient means of presenting the results. A relationship was found, for each fiber type, between the percentage stress relaxation and the time taken to recover to a given level of set. This relationship appeared to be independent of the experimental conditions employed. Although the fibers were not linear viscoelastic under all conditions, recovery could be roughly predicted from their stress relaxation behavior at the particular test conditions using the Boltzmann superposition principle.