Mechanical properties evaluation of nonwoven industrial cotton waste produced by needle punching method

This paper describes the fabrication method and mechanical characterization of nonwoven fabrics from industrial fabric wastes by different machine variables. Cotton waste fibres underwent the mechanical recycling methods, needle punching process and worked into a continuous web of nonwoven fabrics. The measurement method of full factorial design of experiment was implemented in this study as a systematic and efficient way to distinguish between the interaction of more than one factor which are the fibre feeder speed and the number of stacking layers, respectively. Three different fibre feeder speed of 1.8 m/s, 2.2 m/s and 2.8 m/s and three levels of stacking layer (4, 5 and 6 layers) were examined. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the significant factors that influenced the mechanical properties of the web nonwoven fabrics. The mechanical properties of nonwoven web were measured by bursting strength test and puncture resistance test. The results displayed that the difference in fibre feeder speed and number of stacking layer significantly affect the puncture resistance performance. S26L web resisted the highest load during puncture resistance test which is 70.5 N while S14L resisted the lowest load of 25.5 N. Whereas, bursting strength performance was only affected by the fibre feeder speed. Lower fibre feeder speed produced stronger nonwoven fabric. Hence, the faster the fibre feeder speed and the higher number of stacking layer give good puncture resistance properties of nonwoven fabrics while the bursting properties of nonwoven fabrics shows the opposites results. (paper)