A STUDY ON PERFORMANCE OF POLYPROPYLENE CARPETS PRODUCED WITH DIFFERENT FILAMENT FINENESS AND SLIP ADDITIVE RATIOS UNDER STATIC LOADING

Abstract

Polypropylene, which is one of the most used polymers in machine carpet production as pile yarn, has some disadvantages need to be developed, such as lower resilience, flattening, matting etc. For this reason, there are so many studies in order to improve the inferior properties of polypropylene in carpet industry. In this study, eight carpet samples were produced by polypropylene BCF yarns with two filament fineness (3.7 and 9.5 dpf) and four ratios of slip additive (0 wt%, 0.5 wt%, 1 wt%, 2 wt%). In order to determine the effects of different filament fineness and additive percentage on thickness loss and resilience, carpet samples were exposed to short-term static loading test. According to the results, samples with 9.5 dpf filament fineness had lower thickness loss values compared to those of samples with 3.7 dpf filament fineness. Besides, the resilience behaviours of samples with 9.5 dpf filament fineness were also obtained to be better than samples with 3.7 dpf filament fineness. In consideration with slip additive percentages, although a trend was not observed between the increased additive ratio and mechanical responses of carpets, a difference was obtained between pure and 2 wt% additive blended samples. The blended samples with 2 wt% additive had shown lower thickness loss and higher resilience compared to neat samples.