Effects of wetting and compression/recovering time on the compressionalbehaviour of sanitary napkin layers

Abstract

Sanitary napkins are technical textile products which are used by women. They are designed as layered structures to fulfil several end–use properties at the same time. One of the most important properties of sanitary napkins is absorption property and this is widely studied in the literature. On the other hand, formability and sensorial comfort of sanitary napkins are of great importance but they are ignored during scientific researches. During daily life, women sit or sleep for certain time intervals and their sanitary napkins are exposed to compressional forces. If the sanitary napkin will squeeze and not recover, this can result with poor sensorial comfort and low formability. Also, wetting of sanitary napkins during usage can worsen the compressional properties. Therefore in this study, effect of wetting and compression/recovering time on the compressional behaviours of sanitary napkins was evaluated. Study was focused on separate sanitary napkin layers in order to detect the most problematic layers. Two compression times and four recovering times were applied to samples for compression tests. Also, sanitary napkin layers were characterised by scanning electron microscopy, unit mass, thickness and bending measurements. According to results, top sheet layer was the most compressible layer in dry and wet states. This is expected to give a soft and resilience sense to the sanitary napkin. Absorbent layer was responsible for low compressibility of sanitary napkins under different compression/recovering times. Bending rigidity of absorbent layer was the highest in dry state but it exhibited a dramatic decrement after wetting