On the Capillary Wicking Behavior of Spunlace NonwovenF. Hajiani, A.A. Jeddi, M. Hosseini, N. Ansari
Abstract Nowadays the use of spunlace nonwoven as absorbent products is increasing. Considering the wide usage of these fabrics in different fields such as wipers, hygienic products, wet handkerchiefs, baby diapers, the subject of wetting and capillary wicking in these products is greatly important. In this research the effect of spunlace nonwoven structure on wicking behavior of water has been studied. Twelve different nonwoven samples consisting of 70% viscous/ 30% PET fiber with different weights (35, 40, 45,50g/m2) and water jet pressures (60, 70, 80 bar) were produced. An electrical resistance technique has been developed to study the rate of horizontal wicking of water into nonwoven samples, based on Lucas-Washburn Equation. The study shows that in the nonwoven samples, the wicking distance and penetration rate decrease due to increasing of water jet pressure (WJP) and sample weight. It reveals that increasing sample weight and production WJP, change capillary spaces of samples. It has been possible to study equivalent geometric factor of capillary spaces during wicking measurement of water into nonwoven samples. The radius of open channels in the nonwoven sample tend to decreases as a result of increasing weight of samples and water jet pressure in production nonwoven sample.
Keywords: nonwoven, spunlace, wicking, water jet pressure, sample weight.
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