A modification of the two-flux model of Kubelka-Munk was proposed for the description of light propagating through a fiber-air mixture medium, which simplified fibers' internal reflection as a part of the scattering on the total fiber path length. A series of systematical experiments demonstrated a higher consistency with the reference quantity distribution than the common Lambert law on the fibrogram used in the textile industry did. Its application in the fibrogram for measuring the cotton fiber's length was demonstrated to be good, extending its applicability to the wool fiber, the length of which is harder to measure than that of the cotton fiber.

This paper introduces a new developed wool fiber length imaging measurement instrument, named the random-beard image method, an applied fibrogram method of wool fiber length measurement. It includes four parts, namely the fiber beard preparation, image acquisition and fibrograms and fiber length parameter calculation using the dual beard and a new calculation method of Hauteur length (mean fiber length biased by the cross-section of the fibers). To check the accuracy of the built instrument, the international standard fiber length measurement instrument, the Almeter100, was used as the reference method for comparison. Hence, 10 kinds of wool fibers were measured with both methods and the results showed that four fiber length parameters, the Barbe length (weighted mean length), Hauteur length, the coefficient of variation of the Barbe length and the Hauteur length of the two methods, have high consistency. An F-test was also applied to test the repeatability of these two methods measuring another three kinds of wool fibers five times. It was found that, under the significance level of α = 0.05, the repeatability of both methods is on the same level.

Antibacterial wound dressings are promising materials to treat infected skin wounds, which greatly affect the wound-healing process. In this study, tannic acid (TA), a natural antibacterial agent, was successfully loaded by electrospinning into poly(caprolactone) (PCL) fibers in a high concentration. It is suggested that the addition of TA was beneficial for producing uniform and continuous PCL nanofibers. Hydrogen bonds existed between the PCL and TA molecules based on the analysis of FTIR spectra and DSC results. The interactions and continuous network improved the mechanical properties of the scaffolds. Meanwhile, increasing the amount of TA also enhanced the hydrophilicity and water absorption capacity of the scaffold, both of which are beneficial for accelerating wound healing. Moreover, a burst release of the TA in the initial stage and a controlled, steady release behavior over time contributed to the highly antibacterial properties of the PCL/TA scaffolds. The fabrication of the composite scaffold supplies a facile, efficient, and controllable approach to address the issue of antibacterial treatment in wound dressing.

The random beard image method is a newly developed fiber length measurement method with the advantages of speed, reliability and low cost. This paper proposed the methods of acquiring an accurate and stable fibrogram from the transmission image with the random beard image method based on the derived Kubelka–Munk theory. In the dual-beard preparation process, the optical properties of the short fiber region in the beard were changed by the napping effect. To solve this problem, an imitating experiment with five types of wool fibers was designed to obtain the optical coefficient of the maximum value of the fibrograms of 1.03. To eliminate the random error of the sample, the symmetry principle was adopted to determine the start line of the dual-fibrogram, and the weighted smoothing average fibrogram from two dual-beards is used as the final fibrogram. In addition, upon testing 20 types of wool fiber samples by the random beard image method and the international standard instrument Almeter100, the waviness coefficient of 1.10 was determined. A Z-test and Bland–Altman plot were also applied to verify the accuracy and repeatability of the random beard image method. The results show that under the significance level α = 0.05, the accuracy and the repeatability of the two methods are at the same level. This method sets the foundation for measuring the fiber length distribution parameters, especially the short fiber content.