Moisture in Textiles

Abstract

Evidence is presented that for a cotton hair structure of the specific type described, calculations are in such close agreement with many experimental data as to suggest the following tentative conclusions: 1. The moisture content necessary to form a monomolecular layer on all internal surface of the cotton hair appears to be slightly more than 1 per cent of the hair weight. 2. Less than half the internal surface, that termed fibril surface, appears to be involved in moisture adsorption which causes appreciable transverse swelling of the cotton hair. Upon this surface multimolecular chains of water seem to condense, the length of such chains increasing progressively up to saturation with corresponding increases in hair diameter throughout the whole of this range, each hydroxyl group in the cellulose surface being the base of a water chain, with separations between these chains along the surface corresponding to the arrangement of the hydroxyl groups on the cellulose surface. 3. Moisture adsorbed on surfaces within the cellulose aggregates composing the fibrils does not appear to be involved in transverse swelling, but may be responsible for the slight longitudinal swelling exhibited by cotton. The capacity of the cotton hair for this type of adsorption suggests that its locus is the ends of crystallites and therefore within the body of the fibrils. To account for the slight swelling, it is assumed that only a monomolecular layer can be adsorbed on these surfaces. 4. A theory is proposed to explain the dependence of the electrical properties of textiles upon their moisture adsorbing properties, and upon the surface distribution of moisture within the submicroscopic structure.