Studies on compression properties of polyester needle-punched nonwoven fabrics under dry and wet conditions

In this article, the effects of fabric weight, fiber cross-sectional shapes (round, hollow, and trilobal), and presence of reinforcing material on the compression properties (initial thickness, percentage compression, percentage thickness loss, and percentage compression resilience) under dry and wet conditions of polyester needle-punched industrial nonwoven fabrics are presented. It has been found that initial thickness of the fabric decreases under wet condition for both with and without reinforcing materials. The percentage thickness loss values are higher under wet condition in case of samples with reinforcing material compared to samples without reinforcing material. In the presence of reinforcing material, the trilobal cross-sectional fabric samples show the highest increase in thickness loss under wet condition followed by round and hollow cross-sectional polyester needle-punched nonwoven samples. Compression resilience is the highest in case of round cross-sectional fabric without reinforcing material under wet condition than fabric with reinforcing material. The initial thickness increases, and percentage compression and thickness loss decrease with the increase in fabric weight irrespective of fiber cross-sectional shapes both in dry and wet conditions. The initial thickness, percentage compression, and percentage compression resilience of the fabric decrease but percentage thickness loss increases under wet condition compared to the dry condition irrespective of the fiber cross-sectional shape. Compared to other cross-sectioned polyester samples, the hollow cross-section samples undergo very less consolidation under wet condition due to their consolidated structure. There is a drastic drop in compression resilience and increase in thickness loss under wet condition than in dry state irrespective of the fiber cross-sectional shape.