Abstract:

weft strength of cotton fabrics after and before shape memory finishing was improved by two means of micro-stretching, i. e., stretch-stop and cyclic stretch (cyclic tension loads). Experimental results showed that the breaking strength of fabric can be enhanced when stretch-stop or cyclic stretch is applied to it under a certain stretching rate. The higher the stretching rate, the shorter the pause time needed for reaching the maximum breaking strength, and the less the cyclic times. Two-factor five-level orthogonal test method was used to test the strength of fabrics by stretch-stop, and the tensile parameters and strength improvement were analyzed. The results showed that for the unfinished fabrics, the maximum breaking strength (enhanced by 31.9%) was obtained by using stretch-stop with stretching rate of 4% and then pause for 3 minutes, while in the case of finished fabrics, with the same stretching rate the maximum breaking strength (enhanced by 42.1%) was obtained at a pause of 2 minutes.