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Volume 02 | Issue 01 | 2020
International Research Journal of Applied Sciences Research Article
pISSN: 2663-5577, eISSN: 2663-5585
Impact of Blend Ratio on Cotton-modal Blended Ring-spun
Yarn Quality with Varying Modal Fibre Percentage
Subrata Kumar Saha and Jamal Hossen
Department of Textile Engineering, Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (AUST),
141-142 Love Road, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka 1208, Bangladesh
ARTICLE INFORMATION
Received: January 23, 2020
Accepted: February 10, 2020
Corresponding Author:
Jamal Hossen,
Department of Textile Engineering,
Ahsanullah University of Science and
Technology (AUST), 141-142 Love Road,
Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka 1208,
Bangladesh
ABSTRACT
Fibre blend ratio is an important factor that determines the properties of spun yarn. Modal
is a regenerated manmade fibre and free from short fibres, neps and impurities. In this paper,
the influence of modal fibre percentage on the properties of cotton-modal blended yarn was
studied. Cotton-modal blended yarn with blend ratio of 80:20, 70:30 and 50:50 and 100%
cotton yarns of 30 Ne were produced in ring spinning frame. The experimental results
showed that the yarn quality parameters such as irregularity, thick places, thin places, neps,
Imperfection Index and hairiness of 100% cotton are higher than cotton-modal blended yarn.
With the increase of modal fibre percentage, the quality of blended yarns was improved than
100% cotton yarn. The unevenness of cotton-model blended yarn was decreased by 22%
with the increase of model fibre proportion from 0 to 50%. In regards to the Count Strength
Product (CSP) value, the cotton-modal blended yarns showed an increasing trend with
increasing of modal fibre percentage in the blend ratio. It can be attributed that the absence
of short fibres in modal fibre, which phenomena was contributed to the yarn properties with
increasing the modal fibre percentage. Increasing modal fibre proportion was reflected in the
considerable enhancement of cotton-modal fibre blended yarn quality.
Key words: Cotton-modal, blend ratio, neps, Um%, CVm%, imperfections, CSP
INTRODUCTION
In the textile industry, ring spinning is a necessary process that is involved to produce
ring-spun yarns of various qualities required for different applications from different
natural or synthetic or regenerated fibres1. Cotton is a part of daily routine lives. It has
hundreds of consumptions, from blue jeans to shoe strings. Clothing and household
items are the most significant uses, but industrial products account for many thousands
of bales. Cotton is considered one of the best fibres due to its superior physical and
mechanical properties such as moisture absorbency, tensile properties, surface
characteristics and its compatibility with many other natural and synthetic fibres.
Technological improvement has enabled the textile industry to produce numerous
types of yarns and fabrics with a special appearance by varying structure and product
mix. Blending of different kinds of fibres is practiced to enhance the quality
characteristics of yarn by incorporating desirable properties of constituent fibres to
reduce the cost2,3. Fibre blend ratio is an essential factor that determines the properties
of spun yarn and is specified by the types of fibres and their proportion in the resultant
mixture4-6. Among the different blends, cotton-polyester, cotton-wool, wool-acrylic,
cotton-nylon, jute-acrylic, cotton-rayon, etc. are common.
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Viscose fibres are the first, modal fibres are the second and
lyocell fibres are the third generation representatives of the
regenerated cellulose fibres7. All regenerated cellulosic fibres
have the same chemical composition. They differ in density,
molecular mass, degree of polymerization, degree of
crystallinity and orientation8. In the modal fibres, the fibre
elements are more uniform and firmly located in the fibre
cross-section and do not show the inner/outer difference. The
average polymerization degree is higher than the standard
viscose fibres. Therefore, modal fibre has better characteristics
such as higher dry and wet tenacity, moisture absorption,
length uniformity, shrinkage, softness and appearance. Modal
fibre is compatible of blending with natural cotton fibre to
produce cotton-modal blended yarn in different blend ratios.
Modal yarn and cotton-modal blended yarn can be used to
manufacture knitted fabric with desirable characteristics for
various applications such as sports and casual wear, bed linen
and inner wears that shrinks less, softer to touch and absorb
more9. Comparison of quality characteristics of yarn and
knitted fabrics made from 100% modal yarn and 100% cotton
yarn has been reported on several works10. Ishtiaque
et al
.11
stated that spinning machine parameters such as spindle
speed, top roller pressure and traveler mass are influencing
the ring yarn qualities such as strength, unevenness and
hairiness significantly. Ghane
et al
.12 have studied and
observed that the top roller diameter significantly affects the
unevenness of ring-spun polyester-cotton blended yarn
quality. Khan
et al
.13 investigated the effect of spindle speed
and twist on the strength, unevenness and elongation quality
of viscose-melange cotton blended spun yarn with different
blend ratio. Basu and Gotipamul14 proved that spindle speed,
break draft and spacer size are influencing the imperfections
and unevenness properties of polyester-cotton blend yarn.
Hatamvand
et al
.15 reported that the effects of the total draft,
break draft and roller pressure on the properties of ring-spun
polyester-viscose blend yarns are significant. Erdumlu
et al
.16
revealed that vortex spun yarns have better pilling resistance
and lower hairiness over the rotor and ring spun cotton,
viscose and cotton modal blended yarns. Viscose rayon
produced more satisfactory results in the vortex spinning
system in terms of yarn strength, particularly in coarser yarn
counts and hairiness. Kilic and Okur17 compared structural,
physical and mechanical properties of cotton-Tencel and
cotton-Promodal blended ring, compact and vortex spun
yarns. They found that increase in the ratio of regenerated
cellulosic fibre content in the blend decreases unevenness,
imperfections, diameter and roughness values; on the other
hand, it increases braking force, elongation, density and shape
values. Blended yarn qualities such as tenacity, unevenness
and hairiness highly depend on the fibre-material-dependent
parameters such as blend ratio of fibres and the ring frame
spinning machine setting parameters such as spindle speed,
traveler mass, top roller pressure and diameter, break draft
and twist factor18.
Although some research efforts have been made on different
process parameters, there was a lack of detailed research on
the influence of modal fibre percentage in blend ratio on the
quality of cotton-modal blended yarn. In this work, an attempt
has been taken to investigate and analyze the impact of modal
fibre proportion in blend ratio on the properties of cotton-
modal blended yarn and is compared with 100% cotton yarn
manufactured in the ring-spinning system alone with the
remaining other machine parameters fixed.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Experimental site: The study was carried out at Square Textile
Mills Ltd., located at Sardagonj, Kashimpur, Gazipur, Dhaka,
Bangladesh. It took 20 days to do the experimental work in
September 2019.
Materials: Cotton from USA and modal from Austria were
used as the raw materials to prepare cotton-modal blended
yarn. The natural cotton fibre properties tested with the help
of Uster HVI and Uster AFIS Pro, according to the standard
testing conditions19
a nd th e pr o pe rt i es o f m od a l f i br e pr o vi d ed
by the suppliers. Properties of cotton and modal fibres are
shown in Table 1.
Research procedure: The cotton and modal fibres were
manually blended at the ratio of 80 and 20%, respectively. The
blended fibres were processed in blow room section where
fibres were opened and cleaned. Then processed fibres were
fed to carding machine from which cotton-modal blended
slivers produced with the hank of 4.9 ktex at 150 m minG1
delivery speed, that was fed to breaker draw frame to produce
4.9 ktex breaker drawn slivers with 6 (six) doublings. After that,
the produced slivers passed through finisher draw frame with
8 (eight) doublings and produced 4.82 ktex finisher drawn
slivers. Finisher drawn slivers were fed into simplex machine
to produce roving of 0.80 Ne with TM of 0.98. Then 30 Ne
(80:20) cotton-modal yarn manufactured with TM of 3.5 in ring
frame. The same procedure was carried out for producing
Table 1: Properties of cotton and modal fibres
Fibre Origin Length (mm) Strength (g/tex) Fineness (µg/inch)
Cotton USA 30.33 30.7 4.67
Modal Austria 38.00 35.2 3.60
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Int. Res. J. Applied Sci., 2 (1): 22-27, 2020
Mixing bale opener
Uniclean
Unimix
lex
Foregn material separato r
Condenser
Carding
Breaker draw frame
Finisher draw frame
Simplex
Ring f rame
Unif
Table 2: Cotton-modal blend ratio of produced yarn
Sr. No. Blend ratio (Cotton: Modal)
1 100:0
2 80:20
3 70:30
4 50:50
different blend ratio of cotton-modal yarn along with 100%
cotton yarn, as shown in Table 2, keeping all other machine
parameters fixed.
Data collection: Following the yarn production, yarn samples
were conditioned at (20±3)EC temperature and (65±2)% RH
according to the standard19. Incipiently, yarn unevenness tests
were carried out using Uster Tester-4. After then, tensile
strength was done with the help of lea strength tester
machine according to the standards.
Experimental design: There are several ways to blend
different fibre materials. Still, over time, three ways have
become well-known for blending manmade fibres in the
modern spinning mill: tuft blending at the start of blow room
process, tuft blending at the end of blow room process and
sliver blending at drawing stage20. In this work tuft blending
at the start of the blow room process was used. The process
flowchart for producing cotton-modal yarn is shown in Fig. 1.
Parameter measured: The produced 30 Ne cotton-modal
blended yarn of different ratio and 100% cotton ring-spun
yarn were tested for their uniformity, imperfection and
hairiness by using Uster Tester-4.
Unevenness: Unevenness percentage is the mass deviation of
the unit length of material. It is caused by uneven fibre
distribution along the length of the yarn.
(1)
Mean deviation
Unevenness (Um%) 100%
Mean
The Coefficient of Variation (CVm%) is commonly used to
define variability in handling large quantities of data
statistically. It is currently possibly the most widely known way
of quantifying the unevenness.
(2)
Standard deviation
Coefficient of variation (CVm%) 100%
Mean
Imperfection index: Imperfection index is the sum of thick
places, thin places and neps per km of yarn.
Fig. 1: Flowchart for yarn production
Imperfection index Thick places 50% / km Thin places 50% / km neps(200%) / km
(3)
Thin place (-50%): A place in the yarn that exceeds -50% with
respect to mean yarn cross-section and length is 10 mm.
Thick place (+50%): A place in the yarn that exceeds +50%
with respect to mean yarn cross-section and length is 10 mm.
Neps (+200%): A place in the yarn that exceeds +200% with
respect to mean yarn cross-section and length is up to 4 mm.
Hairiness: Hairiness is the total length of protruding fibres
within the measurement field of 1 cm length.
Count and strength: Yarn count was determined using Auto
Sorter-5 and it gave a direct reading. Lea strength of yarn was
calculated using lea strength tester. The Count Strength
Product (CSP) was calculated by using the following equation.
(4)
Yarn strength Yarn count Ne Lea strength pound
Statistical analysis: Data were evaluated and summarized
by using Microsoft excel and necessary statistical equations
were used to determine the frequencies of variation in
cotton-modal yarn thickness to identify the quality
parameters.
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Int. Res. J. Applied Sci., 2 (1): 22-27, 2020
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
U
m
(%)
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
C
V
m
(
%
)
600
500
400
300
200
100
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
N
eps (+200%)/k
m
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
Thick places (-50%)/k
m
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
Thin places (-50%)/k
m
Fig. 2: Impact of blend ratio on Um% of cotton-modal
blended yarn
Fig. 3: Impact of blend ratio on CVm% of cotton-modal
blended yarn
RESULTS
The properties of produced different ratio cotton-modal yarn
are given in Fig. 2 to 9.
Unevenness of cotton-modal blended yarn: In Fig. 2 and 3,
100% cotton yarn has the highest value of Um% and
CVm%. Whereas 50:50 cotton-modal yarn has the lowest
value in comparison to other blended yarn. A clear decreasing
trend is seen in the unevenness of yarn with the increase of
modal fibre percentage. The Um% and CVm% of yarn were
found to be decreased about 22% with the increase of modal
fibre.
Imperfections of cotton-modal blended yarn: Figure 4 to 7
depicted the imperfections of yarn. In all cases, cotton‒modal
blended yarn imperfections ((thick places (+50%), thin places
(‒50%) and neps (+200%)) decrease with the increase of
modal fibre portion in blending ratio. The imperfections index
value was decreased tremendously to 77%, by increasing the
modal fibre from 0 to 50%.
Fig. 4: Impact of blend ratio on thin places (-50%)/km of
cotton-modal blended yarn
Fig. 5: Impact of blend ratio on thick places (+50%)/km of
cotton-modal blended yarn
Fig. 6: Impact of blend ratio on Neps (+200%)/km of cotton-
modal blended yarn
Hairiness of cotton-modal blended yarn: In Fig. 8, it is shown
that when modal fibre portion was 0%, the hairiness was 5.40,
on the other hand when modal fibre portion was 50%, then
the hairiness was 4.74. By observing the graph, it can be said
that the variation of modal fibre in cotton-modal ratio affects
the hairiness of the cotton-modal blended yarn.
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Int. Res. J. Applied Sci., 2 (1): 22-27, 2020
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
I
m
perfection index
5.6
5.4
5.2
5.0
4.8
4.6
4.4 100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend rati
o
H
airiness
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0100:00 80:20 70:30 50:50
Cotton-modal blend ratio
C
SP
Fig. 7: Impact of blend ratio on imperfection index of cotton-
modal blended yarn
Fig. 8: Impact of blend ratio on hairiness of cotton-modal
blended yarn
Fig. 9: Impact of blend ratio on CSP of cotton-modal blended
yarn
Strength of cotton-modal blended yarn: Figure 9 provides a
significant impact on the yarn strength with the increase of
modal fibre. From this graph, it is observed that with the
increase of modal fibre, strength (CSP) of the cotton-modal
blended yarn was increased.
DISCUSSION
The quality of the cotton-modal blended yarn improved with
the increase of modal fibre in the blend ratio. The Um% and
CVm% of cotton-modal blended yarn (Fig. 2, 3) were
decreased by 22% with the increase of modal fibre from 0 to
50%. The reason behind that was the length variation of
cotton and modal fibre. This trend was contributed by the
higher length uniformity and absence of short fibres in modal
fibre compared to cotton fibre10. Thin places and thick places
(Fig. 4, 5) were higher in 100% cotton yarns and gradually
decreased with the increase of modal fibre percentage in the
blended yarn. Short fibres content, which creates more
floating fibres in the drafting system, is not present in modal
fibre and this leads to lower yarn thin places and thick places21.
Cotton fibre contains considerable amount of neps where
modal fibre contains no neps9 as a result, neps as shown in
Fig. 6 decreased with the increase of modal fibre percentage.
Higher length and length uniformity, absence of short fibre
and neps present in modal fibre reflected on imperfection
index15 (Fig. 7) of cotton-modal blended yarn which showed
a decreasing trend with the incorporation of modal fibre
portion in blended yarn. Length and length uniformity index
of modal fibre is higher than cotton fibre22 and this fibre
property affects the hairiness of cotton-modal blended yarn.
The hairiness of cotton-modal blended yarn (Fig. 8) decreased
near about 12%, as the percentage of modal fibre increase in
the blend ratio. The strength of cotton-modal blended yarn
(Fig. 8) increased with the increase of modal fibre. The high
strength, length and length uniformity of modal fibres
contribute directly towards yarn strength10. In addition to this,
modal fibre was also finer than cotton fibre (Table 1). The
number of finer modal fibre in blended yarn also increased as
the proportion of modal fibre increase in the blend ratio and
that leads to the improvement of tenacity. Increasing modal
fibre proportion was reflected in the considerable
enhancement of cotton-modal fibre blended yarn quality.
CONCLUSION
In this work, three different cotton-modal blend yarns were
manufactured and their characteristics was compared with
100% cotton yarn. Modal is a regenerated manmade fibre and
it has no short fibres, neps, impurities compared to cotton.
Yarn quality parameters such as Um%, CVm%, thick places
(+50%)/km, thin places (-50%)/km, neps (+200%)/km and
hairiness were analysed. The 100% cotton yarn was exhibited
inferior quality than cotton-modal blended yarns. With the
increase of modal percentage, yarn parameters were showed
a better result than 100% cotton yarn. The CSP value of the
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Int. Res. J. Applied Sci., 2 (1): 22-27, 2020
cotton-modal blended yarn was showed an increasing trend
with the increase of modal fibre percentage than 100% cotton
yarn. The length and strength of modal fibres are higher than
cotton fibre that was directly reflected on the properties of
cotton-modal blended yarn.
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