Evaluating the surface hairiness of woven fabric belts with a yarn hairiness tester

Abstract

Fabric surface hairiness has a decisive effect on the fabric processing performance and the resultant garment quality. In practice, current testing of fabric hairiness still cannot be conducted like the routine testing of yarn hairiness. With the aim of conducting fabric hairiness testing routinely, a novel method of testing woven fabric belt hairiness was proposed in this study, using a yarn hairiness meter. For practical experiments, a woven fabric sample was firstly slit and then the slit sections were connected as a continuous belt. A belt support and some belt guides were applied to guarantee the continuous feeding of the belt into a yarn hairiness detector zone, where the belt surfaces were vertical to the laser emissioner and the hairiness detector surfaces. Consequently, hairiness of both surfaces of the belt was projected and fully mapped on the detector surface. Experimental results showed that the fabric belt hairiness was successfully tested in terms of the hairiness length, number and distributions; fabric belts with different hairiness levels before and after hair-cutting could be effectively identified. In particular, the representative true hairiness of the woven fabric belt could be calculated by subtracting the tested hairiness value of 3 mm wide belt to that of 2 mm wide belt. Comparative analysis indicated that our method was more suitable for routine testing of woven fabric hairiness than other current methods.