Nonwoven Fabrics

Nonwovens fabrics are directly made from fibers/filaments. The combination of a range of fiber/filament types, web formation, web bonding, and post processing methods allows engineering a myriad of nonwoven structures. The manmade/manufactured fibers dominate the nonwoven market with polypropylene, polyester, and viscose being the mostly consumed fibers. The two key components of nonwoven technology are web formation and web-bonding methods. The modern nonwovens carding equipment may employ different arrangements to control the machine-direction-to-cross-direction ratio of the produced webs. The wet-laid nonwovens are prepared from fibers dispersible in a liquid. The three main types of polymer-laid technology are spun-lagging; melt blowing, and electro spinning. The first two are widely employed at commercial scale with spun-laid being one of the most common nonwoven technologies. The electro spinning technology is one of the most active research areas in textiles/nonwoven technology but did not have considerable commercial success yet.