Effect of Natural Agents on the Mechanical and Flame Retardant Properties of Cotton Fabric–Dyeing Technique

Abstract

Abstract Home textile products manufactured and exported in huge quantities from Karur, Namakkal, Erode, and Salem are the established foremost important geographical locations centers in Southern India. The cotton fibers are less resistant to fire and that leads to unexpected accidents, thus there is an importance of the flame retardance tendency for home textiles. Eco-friendly herbal extract–dyed cotton has been investigated for tensile strength and flame retardant properties. The current research elaborately studies the antibacterial dyed cotton fabric materials in terms of improved flame retardant property through eco-friendly herbal extracts to cotton fabrics with simultaneous analysis on their tensile strength properties. The mangosteen-dyed cotton fabrics showed better results with specifications of 140 g/m2, plain weave with 40 % dye concentration, 240 g/m2, terry weave with 40 % dye concentration and untreated cotton fabrics of 140 g/m2 and 240 g/m2 had the tensile strength of 237.87 kg/cm2, 288.69 kg/cm2 and 238.38 kg/cm2, 288.47 kg/cm2. The flame response studies revealed the the burning time increases from 35 s for untreated 140 g/m2 plain cotton fabric to 50 s and 45 s for the fabrics dyed with mangosteen and borage. Correspondingly, the burning rate changes from 320 mm/min for untreated 140 g/m2 plain cotton fabrics to 290 mm/min and 300 mm/min for mangosteen- and borage-dyed fabrics, respectively. The limited oxygen index (LOI) test results showed that the borage-dyed fabrics exhibited little increased LOI values of 20 over the other treated samples on an average of LOI of 19 in comparison with the untreated cotton fabrics of LOI 18.