Do you know what are non-woven fabrics? They are engineered fabrics made from cut yarns, continuous strands and fibres. They are porous and flexible products that consist of one more layer of fibres. The fibres can be deposited in a random manner or they can be placed in one particular direction.
Non-woven fabrics are bonded with the help of mechanical, thermal or chemical processes to produce textile products.
Characteristic Features of Non-Woven Fabric
The production method determines what kind of properties a non-woven fabric will have. Hence, they have a wide range of characteristics –
- Non-woven fabrics might appear as felt like, paper-like or like any woven fabric.
- They might be soft and resilient or can be stiff and hard.
- They can also have little pliability.
- They can be thicker or as thin as tissue paper.
- They may be opaque or translucent.
- They can have high tensile strength or their porosity can be low.
- They can be fabricated through sewing, heat bonding or gluing.
- Some fabrics can be washed while others do not have launderability. Some non-woven fabrics, again, might need to be dry cleaned.
Different Kinds of Non-Woven Fabrics
There are four primary types of non-woven fabrics –
- Airlaid
- Wet laid
- Spunbound
- Dry laid
AIR LAID
Airlaid fabrics are made of wood-pulp and have good absorbent quality. This fabric can be combined with SAP in a definite proportion to improve their absorption capability. Airlaid non-woven and dry paper non-woven are the same. These non-woven products are used with several other products like filter material, embroidery material, hygiene and medical products and interlining of clothes.
WET LAID
These non-woven fabrics are made by an improved papermaking process. Here the fibres are suspended in water. Wet laid non-woven manufacturing process is used in producing structures having textile-fabric features. Wet laid is used in commonly used products like face cloths, synthetic fibre paper and tea bag papers.
SPUNBOND
The spunbond nonwoven manufacturing process is more economical since it includes fibre production together with fabric production. Spunbound products are used in geotextiles, automotive products, carpet backing, packaging products, civil engineering products, hygiene or medical disposable products.
DRY LAID
Dry laid non-woven production has a number of advantages like it creates a voluminous web, varieties of processable fibres like carbon, steel, glass, natural and synthetic and isotropic web structure. Products of Dry laid process are used in a wide range of products like baby diapers, beverage filtration materials and cosmetic wipes.
Thus, non-woven fabrics have a lot of utility in today’s world.
