Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Industrial Protective Fabric with Recycled m-Aramid and Natural Fiber

As consciousness of safety becomes an important social issue, the demand for protective clothing is increasing. Conventional flame-retardant cotton working wear has low durability, and working wear with m-aramid fibers are stiff, heavy, less permeable, and expensive. In this study, recycled m-aramid and cotton have been blended to produce woven fabric of different compositions to enhance high performance and comfort to solve aforementioned problems. The fabrics were analyzed according to constituents and various structural factors. Mechanical properties were measured using KES-FB system. The measured thermal properties are TGA, Qmax, TPP and RPP. Fabric with polyurethane yarn covered by m-aramid/cotton spun yarn is observed to have good wearability. The fabric of open end spun yarn showed more stiffness than that of ring spun yarn. The sample with the high count of yarn has more smooth surface. In addition, high m-aramid content fabric is considered to have relatively high stiffness when using as clothing. In TGA the fabric with higher m-aramid content showed more stable decomposition behavior. The fabric having rough surface showed lower heat transfer properties in Qmax. The influence of the fabric thickness was important in convection and radiant heat test.