PERFORMANCE PROPERTIES OF KNITTED FABRICS PRODUCED FROM rPET AND COTTON/rPET BLENDED VORTEX AND RING YARNS

Abstract

An awareness of environmental issues is crucial for textile engineering due to increasing consumption of textile fibres. In addition, levels of pollution are ever increasing due to single use polymeric packaging materials in our daily life. Single use polymeric packaging materials, such as PET beverage bottles, have impacts on the consumption of raw materials and energy, on the contamination of our water and atmosphere, on human health, on global climate change. In this point of view, the ability of the textile producers to recycle the disposed PET beverage bottles into textile products has a critical importance. In this study, performance properties of knitted fabrics produced from rPET and cotton/rPET blended vortex and ring yarns are investigated to figure out the reproducibility of environmentally friendly textile products. For this aim, 100% rPET, 50-50% rPET-Co and 50-50% VPET-Co yarns were produced by Vortex and Ring Spinning technologies with same yarn number as Ne 30/1. Then the knitted fabric samples were produced from these sample yarns and the fabrics were dyed. Dimensional stability, bursting strength and pilling resistance properties of the fabrics were examined. Dimensional stability properties of rPET used fabrics were found to be similar with the ones which VPET used. Pilling resistance and bursting strength of the sample fabrics were close to each other that rPET usage does not demonstrate any disadvantage. Consequently, rPET fibre usage instead of VPET fibre is found to be appropriate.