Wearable Performances of Lightweight PHA/PLA Fiber and Spun Silk Blended Fabrics

Abstract

Poly hydroxyl alkanoates (PHAs) and poly lactic acid (PLA) are both environment-friendly materials, which can be degraded into water and carbon dioxide in the environment. The PHAs and PLA are biomass polymers that can get new bio-based synthetic fiber by melt spinning. In order to integrate the good performance of the PHA/PLA composite fiber with silk, this paper took the PHA/PLA composite fiber blending with silk to fabricate a kind of new yarn by a waste silk spinning system with blending ratio of 35/65, and 8 kinds of fabrics were designed and woven. The effects of the texture and the weft density of a fabric on air permeability, moisturepermeability, wrinkle recovery performance and pilling resistance were investigated. The results showed that air permeability, moisture permeability and wrinkle recovery performance of blended fabrics changed from large to small in the order of satin, twill, plain, except the pilling resistance. The pilling resistance of blended fabrics improved with the increase of weft density, but air permeability, moisture permeability and wrinkle recovery performance. However, most performances of the blended fabrics were inferior to the spun silk fabric, which could be solved by improving the yarn quality, changing the fabric structure, warp and weft yarn combinations.