Spunbonding and melt-blowing processes

Abstract

The Textile Institute defines a fabric as ‘a manufactured assembly of fibres and/or yarns, which has substantial area in relation to its thickness and sufficient mechanical strength to give the assembly inherent cohesion’. Fabrics are most commonly woven or knitted, but the term includes assemblies produced by lace-making, tufting, felting, net-making and the so-called non-woven processes. The distinctive characteristics of the ‘sheet material’ (fabric) arise from the manner in which the fibres are arranged in the planar structure. Woven and knitted fabrics are made by interlacing and interlooping of linear assemblies of filaments and fibres; non-wovens are made by bonding of web-like arrays of fibres or filaments. The webs may be made from fibres of discrete lengths (ranging from a few millimetres to a few metres) by the carding or wet-laying process, or they may be produced by laying or blowing filaments as they are being melt-extruded. The fabrics made by these latter processes are commonly known as spunbonded or spunlaid and melt-blown non-woven fabrics.