Surface evaluation of PET/PA nonwoven fabrics for next-generation durable apparel textiles

Nonwovens are cheap alternatives to knitted and woven fabrics and offer a promising future for the apparel industry. However, their usage is limited due to some performance constraints. Preparing nonwovens containing bicomponent microfilaments is a novel method to enhance the performance properties. However, the surface properties of nonwovens for durable apparel have not been studied in detail yet. Therefore, this study determined the surface properties of nonwoven apparel fabrics containing polyester: polyamide microfilaments using two different roughness measurement methods (linear and circular contact methods), subjective roughness and total handle evaluation, and microscopic examination. The relationships between fabric structural properties and test outputs were analyzed statistically. The results showed that both methods successfully tested the selected nonwovens. Higher correlations with subjective evaluations were obtained by circular contact method. Both methods correlated with the subjective evaluation results, indicating the usability of some of these samples for apparels, considering only the roughness results.