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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 #297962
Title: Understanding the influence of fiber length on the high volume instrument measurement of cotton fiber strength

Author
item NAYLOR, GEOFFREY - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item Delhom, Chris
item Cui, Xiaoliang
item GOURLOT, JEAN-PAUL - Centro De Cooperation Internationale En Recherche Agronomique Pour Le Development (CIRAD)
item Rodgers Iii, James

Submitted to: Textile Research Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/18/2013
Publication Date: 1/15/2014
Citation: Geoffrey RS Naylor, Christopher D Delhom, Xiaoliang Cui, Jean-Paul Gourlot and James Rodgers 2014. Understanding the influence of fiber length on the high volume instrument measurement of cotton fiber strength. Textile Research Journal. 84(9)979-988. doi: 10.177/0040517513515318.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0040517513515318

Interpretive Summary: An earlier study confirmed the influence of cotton fiber length characteristics on the HVI strength measurement and devised a quantitative correction factor to compensate for the effect. The current paper investigated the validity of two important assumptions utilised in the previous study: 1)single fiber testing confirmed that the particular sample preparation method used to generate samples of different fiber length characteristics from a common cotton sliver did not introduce any inherent damage to the fibres and 2) the positioning of the jaws relative to the beard in the HVI strength measurement was explored. Jaw positioning was found to be quite variable and a function of the size of each individual beard. The average positioning between the different samples was found to be similar, and this validated the assumption and approach used previously for deriving the correction factor for that particular sample set. Characterising the position of the jaws was extended using a wider range of cotton samples. The HVI positioning algorithm appears to not simply be a function of the size of the beard but is also dependent on fiber length characteristics. It was also observed that the reported HVI elongation values displayed both a significant bias due to fiber length and also a dependence of the size of individual beards tested.

Technical Abstract: An earlier study confirmed the influence of cotton fiber length characteristics on the HVITM strength measurement and devised a quantitative correction factor to compensate for the effect. The current paper investigated the validity of two important assumptions utilised in the previous study. Firstly, single fiber testing confirmed that the particular sample preparation method used to generate samples of different fiber length characteristics from a common cotton sliver did not introduce any inherent damage to the fibres (and so this could not be the explanation for the observed trend in measured fiber strength as a function of fiber length). Secondly the positioning of the jaws relative to the beard in the HVI strength measurement was explored. This positioning was found to be quite variable for replicate measurements on the same cotton being a function of the size of each individual beard. The average positioning between the different samples was found to be similar and this validated the assumption and approach used previously for deriving the correction factor for that particular sample set. Characterising the position of the jaws was extended using a wider range of cotton samples. The HVI positioning algorithm appears to not simply be a function of the size of the beard (i.e. the ‘amount’ parameter) but is also dependent on fiber length characteristics. It was also observed that the reported HVI elongation values displayed both a significant bias due to fiber length and also a dependence of the size of individual beards tested.