Study on the Mechanism of Woven Cotton Fabric during Steam Ironing

Abstract

Cotton fabrics are very popular textile products to consumers due to their soft hand and comfortable wearing performance. However, the severe wrinkles on cotton fabrics will frequently happen after washing or wearing. As the growth of the market and demand of consumers, the sales of the steam ironing machine which can remove wrinkles to some extent is getting better. At present, the research is inadequate on the wrinkling mechanism during steam ironing. Therefore, in this paper, we aimed to investigate how cotton woven fabrics’ performance influences on the smoothness appearance after steam ironing. To further analyze wrinkling mechanism, fabrics’ wrinkle recovery rates which comprehensive characterize the physical and mechanical properties were tested with PhabrOmeter, including wrinkle recovery rates at normal temperature and after high temperature treatment. Then, the effect of temperature to fabrics’ wrinkle recovery rates and its relationship with fabrics’ smoothness appearance after ironing were studied. The results indicate that there are no significant correlations between the fabric basic parameters with smoothness appearance after ironing. The effect of temperature during ironing can improve the wrinkle recovery rates about 6%-21%. And no significant correlation is showed between smoothness appearance after ironing and wrinkle recovery rates. Keywords: Steam Ironing; mechanism; fabric parameters; wrinkle recovery rate.