Nonwoven Structure Statistics: Simulation of Effects of Fiber Crimp, Flocculation, Density and Orientation

Abstract

New simulations suggest a universal relationship between the mean number of fibers per zone in a complete sampling scheme and the mean void size, independent of whether the structure is isotropic or anisotropic, contains crimped or straight fibers, randomly laid or flocculated. The mean and standard deviation turn out to be positively correlated for some network parameters, such as mean void size, density, and mean number of fiber contacts. Also, our simulations suggest that fiber crimp has a higher impact on isotropic nonwovens. As crimp is increased, isotropic structures tend to present smaller mean voids, higher mean number of fibers per zone, and higher total number of bonds per fiber, than anisotropic structures.