Comparative study of fabric hairiness from cotton waste yarn

This study investigates and discusses the hairiness of woven fabrics produced from cotton waste yarn. The study was divided into three interrelated basic parts. The first part of the study focuses on the hairiness of the cotton waste yarn, the second part of the study discusses the methodology allowing the assessment of fabric hairiness, and the third part of the study subsequently analyzes the resulting woven fabric hairiness influenced by the hairiness of the input cotton waste weft yarn. The proposed methodology enables to get an idea of the overall qualitative parameters of fabric hairiness, its variability, as well as the spatial distribution of hairs and the potential contribution of the warp and weft system. The yarns 29.5 tex spun from 100% virgin cotton and 100% blowroom cotton waste on the Rieter R37 rotor spinning machine were selected for the experiment of this study and also for the production of the final woven fabric. The USTER®STATISTICS 2023 comparison shows that yarn from virgin cotton falls in a higher quality category (USP™ ≤ 5%), whereas yarn from cotton waste tends to fall in a lower quality category (USP™ = 51%-75%) and is still suitable for the preselected final application in home textile or denim fabrics. The comparison confirmed that the woven fabric sample produced from weft yarn spun from 100% cotton waste selected from selvages had higher values for both the mean of fabric hairiness and the variance of the fabric hairiness. Therefore, the quadrat method for three selected grid cell sizes was applied to get the complex information. The results proved that increasing the grid cell size affected the overall statistical parameters of the fabric hairiness index, mainly its variability. The lower quality of cotton waste fibers processing leads to lower quality of yarn and causes faulty mass as well hair spectra, which play a significant role in fabric hairiness specified by hairiness index or summation criteria.