Wicking behavior of fabrics described by simultaneous acquiring the images of the wet region and monitoring the liquid weight

Abstract

An experimental study on the radial spreading of the liquid from a virtually infinite reservoir onto a horizontal fabric sample was performed using a simple setup which is presented in two variants: One variant (the simplest) collects the images of the wet spot during the radial outward wicking and the other variant collects the images simultaneously with the monitoring of the weight decrease of the liquid reservoir. We notice that recording with a webcam gives advantages in the subsequent data processing. Afterward, the resulting image series were processed with routines developed in LabVIEW to determine the area of the wet spot. The programs are better adapted to the inhomogeneous and anisotropic structure specific to textiles than the existent edge-finding algorithms. The time dependence of the wet area provides information about the wicking kinetics and further, by modeling the data, to the possible mechanism. The experiments were performed using solutions of red (rhodamin 6B) or blue (brilliant blue E133) dyes in linen and polyester samples differing besides the chemical structure in the roughness of their surfaces as well. The data allow an easy comparison between the textile behavior. Determination of the mass loss of the test liquid might be useful especially for the colored fabrics. The infinite reservoir case is compared with that of the finite reservoir.