A study of processing parameters in open-end spinning process for organic cotton (Ne 24)

Abstract

Organic cotton has become a popular product in recent years due to its environmental friendliness. Different from conventional cotton, the planting of organic cotton does not use pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizer, which can cause degradation in soil fertility, water and natural equilibrium. Organic cotton crop rotation can build strong soil, retain water more efficiently, maintain a balance between pests and their natural predators, and control weed growth. This study presented a yarn spinning process using organic cotton as the raw material. An open-end rotor spinning machine was used in the spinning process. To analyze the processing parameters affecting yarn qualities, the Taguchi method and response surface methodology were used to design an orthogonal array experiment and to find the relationship between controllable input parameters (i.e. feed speed, winding speed, and rotor speed) and output qualities (i.e. strength, unevenness, imperfection indicator/km, and hairiness). To find the optimal parameter combination, two popular optimization methods, particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm, were used. The results showed that with optimal parameters (0.345 m/min, 34.717 m/min, 82,599 rpm for feed speed, winding speed, and rotor speed, respectively), the proposed method can find optimum values in all observed qualities. A confirmation experiment was conducted to validate the results.