Nonwovens Manufacturing Technology: Identification of Needs

A number of Priority Technology Development Needs have been identified for nonwoven manufacturers. These are described below:

Light-weight in nonwoven products

Light-weight in nonwoven products while maintaining or improving performance particularly for insulation and filtration products - is crucial to the future viability of many nonwoven manufacturing enterprises. Input material costs represent a high proportion of the final product cost and in many applications such as automotive insulation there is a continued demand for a reduction in weight of component parts. The stress should, therefore, be on the use of finer fibres to increase surface area for a given mass of fibres and to develop innovative structures to improve performance without increasing mass.

High Specific strength nonwovens

The Holy Grail in geotextiles is to increase strength/unit weight of fabric. This is particularly relevant where mining applications present severe challenges for geotextiles because of the loads that mine infrastructures have to endure. Other applications for nonwovens such as filters for the mining industry and some building products would also benefit from improved strength. The improved strength must be achieved without affecting other performance related properties of the fabric. Because of the high proportion of final product cost attributed to the input fibre the increase in strength must be achieved with no increase in material input. Therefore an important challenge is to find ways of achieving this whilst also achieving equal strength in each direction of the fabric. To achieve these goals, some of the focus areas, therefore, will be : new web bonding techniques; innovative structures which provide higher strength to weight ratios and incorporation of new high strength fibres.

Engineering the properties of nonwovens

The above mentioned two priority technology needs target specific fabric characteristics. More generally there is a need to be able to engineer the properties of nonwoven products to better meet customer needs. Nonwoven properties, in practice, are determined by empirical means at the factory level. The engineering of properties based on more rigorous processes could lead to significant savings and improvements in nonwovens properties such as isotropic strength, porosity, bulk etc.

From: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/51/5003/nonwovens-manufacturing-technology-identification-of-needs1.asp