Effect of Laundering Hydroentangled Cotton Nonwoven Fabrics

摘要

To study the effect of household machine laundering on hydroentangled cotton nonwoven developmental fabrics, several sets of such fabrics, uniformly made with cottons of different fiber quality characteristics, were sequentially laundered repeatedly for their performance evaluation after one washing and drying cycle (1 W), 5 W, 10 W, and 20 W, using a standard AATCC method for washing. The control greige fabrics (i.e., before any wash) and their respective versions after the 1 W, 5 W, 10 W and 20 W were examined for their physical and mechanical properties. The laundering results showed that the fabrics, even after 20 wash cycles, had held up unexpectedly well. Nonwovens generally are not considered wash-durable, and more than a third of nonwovens today are used in durable applications that necessarily do not require laundering since most nonwovens inherently are considered “disposable” after one end-use application. At any rate, all the researched fabrics, irrespective of their fiber quality origin, showed a significant drop in tensile strength, mainly after the first wash. The drop was more severe in the machine direction (MD) than in the cross direction (CD).