Compositional and Structural Influence on Some Weft-Knitted Fabrics Comprised of Cotton and Lyocell Yarn

Abstract

Cotton is the most commonly used natural fiber in knitting sector across the world. But lyocell is also gaining popularity these days in knitting sector due to its unique properties and environment friendliness. This study was carried out to find out the changes lyocell fiber can bring to weft-knitted fabric properties in respect of cotton and the possibility of using both cotton and lyocell yarns separately in the same fabric for cost-effective product. Four different weft-knitted fabric structures were produced using 100% cotton yarn and 100% lyocell yarn of the same count and stitch length, and then wales per inch, courses per inch, width, fabric areal density (g/m2), pilling resistance and bursting strength of the fabrics were compared. Results of the two sets of samples were found different as lyocell fabrics showed lower values in all tests except pilling resistance test. Two more fabrics were made with only single jersey plain structure: one of those by alternately feeding both 100% cotton and lyocell yarn in order to obtain a fabric composed of 50% cotton and 50% lyocell yarn and the other one by using 100% lyocell yarn only containing the same amount of twist as cotton yarn. Produced fabrics showed better results than 100% lyocell fabric in all experiments, while only the pilling resistance was found better than that of 100% cotton fabric. In the case of fabric structure, fabrics containing tuck stitches showed comparatively higher fabric width and fabric areal density, similar pilling resistance but lower bursting strength than fabric with only knit stitches.