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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Structure and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #177989
Title: RELATIVE SHORT FIBER CONTENT MEASUREMENTS IS THIS THE SOLUTION

Author
item Cui, Xiaoliang
item Robert Jr, Kearny
item Price, John
item Thibodeaux, Devron
item WATSON, MICHAEL - COTTON, INC.

Submitted to: Proceedings of Engineering Fiber Systems Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/15/2005
Publication Date: 5/1/2005
Citation: Cui, X., Robert Jr, K.Q., Price, J.B., Thibodeaux, D.P., Watson, M. 2005. Relative short fiber content measurements is this the solution. Proceedings of Engineering Fiber Systems Conference. Available: http://www.cottoninc.com/2004ConferencePresentations/RelativeShortFiberMeasurements.

Interpretive Summary: Short Fiber Content (SFC) is defined as the weight percentage of fibers less than one-half inch in the U. S., but it is defined by 16 mm (about 5/8 inches) in China. Our results from Advance Fiber Information System (AFIS) instrument on selected cottons show that the SFC defined by 0.5 inches is a good indicator of short fibers based on the high correlation coefficients with short fiber contents defined by other lengths from 0.3 to 0.7 inches. This indicates that no matter which definition is used, the rank for short fibers is similar. Since the SFC affects processing efficiency and product quality, the cotton textile industry has been advocating obtaining the SFC from cotton classification. However, the very high variation, which caused low repeatability of tests, of the measured SFC is the major barrier to achieve this goal. We searched other fiber length parameters that characterize short fibers. The results show that the Lower Half Mean Length (LHML) has a very strong correlation with the SFC, but has a much lower variation than that of the SFC. The LHML is the mean length by number of the shorter one-half (50%) by weight of the fibers. In addition, the LHML predicted yarn properties as SFC does. Therefore, the LHML is a good short fiber parameter alternative to SFC.

Technical Abstract: Short Fiber Content(SFC) is defined as the weight percentage of fibers less than one-half inch in the U.S., but it is defined by 16 mm (about 5/8 inches)in China. Our results from ARIS data on selected cottons show that the SFC defined by 0.5 inches is a good indicator of short fibers based on the high correlation coefficients with short fiber contents defined by other lengths from 0.3 to 0.7 inches. Since the SFC affects processing efficiency and product quality, the cotton textile industry has been advocating obtaining the SFC from cotton classification. However, the very high variation of the measured SFC is the major barrier to achieve this goal. We searched other fiber length parameters that characterize short fibers. The results show that the Lower Half Mean Length (LHML) has a very strong correlation with the SFC, but has a much lower variation than that of the SFC. In addition, the LHML has similar correlation coeffiecient (R)2 as SGC does with all yarn properties. Therefore, the LHML is a good short fiber parameter alternative to SFC. The cotton classification reports two fiber length parameters: the Uniformity Index (UI) and the Upper Half Mean Length (UHML). The results show that tht UI correlates to the SFC, but the Upper Half Mean Length has very low correlation with the SFC.