Modeling of Yarn Strength Utilization in Cotton Woven Fabrics using Multiple Linear Regression

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Woven fabrics find applications in a variety of areas ranging from clothing to technical textiles. Tensile strength is an important criterion for deciding the merit of woven fabrics in most of these applications. An understanding of various parameters affecting tensile properties would be helpful in manipulating them to achieve desired performance in the fabric. Therefore, there have been numerous attempts to develop models to predict the tensile properties of fabrics based on their structural parameters. The classical approaches can be broadly classified into geometrical models [1-3], energy based models [4-7], statistical models [8-10], and continuum constitutive models [11]. Pierce’s [1] pioneering attempt at defining fabric structure geometrically was followed by Womersley [2] who studied the deformation of woven fabrics under tensile load. Olofsson [3] proposed a model where the yarn geometry was a consequence of external forces and reaction forces in fabrics. He extended the study to predict the deformation–recovery of woven fabrics under various deforming forces [4]. Kawabata, Niwa and Kawai [5, 6] took forward Peirce’s work and proposed models for uniaxial and biaxial deformation of plain woven fabrics. Sagar, Potluri and Hearle [7] proposed energy based mechanical model to predict tensile behavior of plain woven fabrics considering nonlinear behavior of constituent yarns. They also proposed the fabric geometry where the yarn path was based on a polynomial. Zeydan [8] explored statistics as a tool to predict tensile strength of woven fabrics. Shahpurwala [9] applied the statistical bundle theory to model the tensile strength of woven fabrics and concluded that inter-yarn friction at the interlacing points influenced fabric tensile strength positively, with better prediction results being obtained in fabrics with longer float lengths. Ning Pan [10] emphasized the importance of yarn critical length, reinforcing effect of yarn-yarn interactions at crossover points towards fabric strength and components of shear resistance at the contact area. The work included the effect of weave structure on these parameters for cotton plain, twill and satin fabrics and a polyester woven fabric. The author used statistical Weibull function to predict the average strength and corresponding stress-strain behavior for the fabrics under uniaxial and biaxial tensile deformations.