Kompression nasser Textilgewebe / Compression of wet textile

Abstract

Laundering can be described in terms of mass transport and mass transfer. Mass transport is caused by mechanical action: plugs of textile are compressed and water is squeezed out of the textile. The magnitude of the flow of water caused by the compression has not been modelled until now. When a wet plug of textile is compressed, stress acts on the textile and on the water simultaneously. A model by Van Wyk describes the stress acting on the textile. The stress acting on the water can be described by a new model, based on a porous textile structure consisting of capillaries and cavities. During the compression the capillary diameter is constant and the cavities are compressed. By the compression of the cavities new capillaries are created. The model was verified by compressing a plug of textile with constant rate. The experimental data were fitted to the mathematical description. For two plugs of textile with different size, the obtained fit parameters (capillary diameter, fraction of mobile water and fraction of capillaries) were the same. As a check a plug of textile was compressed by a constant external stress. Using the fit parameters obtained from the constant rate experiments the theoretical strain-time curve could be calculated. The calculated curves matched the experimental curves.