Chapter 5: Fiber Testing and Cotton Structure
The first video I watched gave us visuals about how certain fabrics reacted to fire. They first showed us the natural fibers. You could see how cotton and flax are similar in how they react to fire whereas wool has a natural fire resistance built in. When the wool is taken out of the fire it stops burning and instead creates a bead that can be brushed away with no residue left. After the natural fibers, they tested the manufactured fibers. You notice how flammable it is compared to the natural fibers. The nylon would burn and melt so quickly it wouldn't even catch the flame, and the acrylic fiber would not extinguish the flame. Knowing how fabrics react to fire is important to an interior designer because we want to know what is the safest option to put in a building. What fabrics you should stay away from if you are putting it in a restaurant or which fabrics are best in each room of a house.
The Story of Cotton:
When you think of cotton everyone thinks of the white fluff balls that have been picked by hand for centuries. After picking the cotton balls, you think that it goes into just fabric. Cotton is so much more though, for every part of cotton plant its used. It is used for animal feed, for other food products, hair products, and fabric. Because of how much cotton is in demand, the production of the cotton plant had to increase rapidly. Picking by hand was no longer meeting the requirements needed for society.
Cotton Structure: micro and macro
The Cotton fiber is made up of a cuticle, primary cell wall, secondary cell wall and lumen. Cuticle is the outside of a cotton fiber. There is a wax like film covering the outer wall of the cotton fiber that helps it from being destroyed. The primary cell wall is right underneath the cuticle. It is composed of very fine threads of cellulose, called fibrils. There is the secondary cell wall, which forms the bulk of the fiber. The lumen is a hollow canal running the length of the fiber. That is the basic structure of a cotton fiber. The fiber length can range from 1 cm to 6.5 cm. Cotton is white, but it can sometimes be an off-white color or even brown. Also the sun cannot reflect off of cotton.
https://southeastagnet.com/2019/11/05/cotton-peanut-harvest-progress/
http://textilebd.blogspot.com/2011/06/micro-structure-of-cotton-fiber.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7SZ3gRrktc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2RyE7i0sCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAUQNMldp_Y
Emma I really enjoyed your post, the chart you included to summarize the burn tests was a really nice touch to the post. It was also interesting to see the different parts that make up cotton, I feel like sometimes we assume that its just cotton with nothing else to it. I went and looked at the links you provided, it was interesting to read the statistics about how much cotton was harvested this year versus last year and how many cotton plants opened compared to the previous years. (https://southeastagnet.com/2019/11/05/cotton-peanut-harvest-progress/). Very good post!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very informative post with good references
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