Short-Term Outdoor Exposure Effects on Cotton Fabric Abrasion Properties

Abstract

The comfort of textile products that include cotton fibre after exposure to outdoor environments has been emphasized as a sustainable development goal. For textile products, abrasion between fabric and human skin can occur. Moreover, after abrasion, textile products present disposal difficulties. Therefore, evaluation of abrasion properties of textile products is important for comfort and reuse. This study investigated effects of short-term outdoor environments on abrasion properties of cotton fabric as a constituent material of textile products. The cotton knit fabric specimen colours were blue and red. Outdoor exposure tests were conducted based on Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Z 2381. Test times were 0, 2, and 4 weeks (28 October 2019-22 January 2020) for tests conducted in Tokyo (Japan). After outdoor exposure testing, abrasion resistance tests were conducted based on JIS L 1096, yielding the following conclusions. Abrasion tests indicated that the number of cycles to failure of blue cotton knit fabrics were similar to those of red cotton knit fabrics during the 4-week test period. The number of cycles to failure of all cotton knit fabrics during the 2-week test period increased compared with that of all cotton knit fabrics before outdoor exposure tests. The number of cycles to failure of all cotton knit fabrics during the 4-week test period remained almost unchanged compared to those of all cotton knit fabrics during the 2-week test period. The 2-week outdoor environment exposure affected the cotton knit fabric shrinkage because cotton fibre has a hydrophilic group of cellulose. Results suggest that structural changes of cotton knit fabric affected the fabric abrasion properties during outdoor exposure.