Compression creep behaviour of polyester needle-punched nonwoven fabrics

Abstract

This present study deals with the compression creep behaviour of polyester needle-punched nonwoven fabrics. Polyester fibres of three different cross-sectional shapes (round, circular hollow and trilobal) have been selected for this study. An instrument has been designed and fabricated to measure the compression creep property of needle-punched fabrics. The effect of duration of compression load, fabric weight, fibre cross-sectional shapes and reinforcing material on percentage compression creep has been studied. It has been observed that initially, compression creep decreases rapidly and with increase in time, decrease of percentage creep becomes minimal. After about 8500 min of application of the same compression load, no change in compression creep is noticed. The percentage compression creep decreases with the increase in fabric weight irrespective to fibre cross-sectional shapes of polyester needle-punched nonwoven fabrics. Trilobal cross-sectional fabric shows maximum amount of percentage compression creep at all levels of fabric weight followed by round and hollow cross-sectional polyester samples, respectively. The percentage compression creep is higher in case of fabric samples made without reinforcing material compared to the samples with reinforcing material. Hollow cross-sectional polyester fibre can be successfully used as raw material for the preparation of needle-punched nonwoven fabrics with or without reinforcing material carpet or floor mats. However, normal round cross-sectional polyester fibre only with reinforcing material can be used for the said application. Compression creep values of these selected polyester needle-punched fabric samples are much lesser in comparison with commercial market polypropylene needle-punched carpet samples.