The Revolution in Textile Industry

The development of engineering materials throughout history followed the example of the inanimate world and metallurgy has become an advanced and scientific study.

The need in last century and in particular in the second half of last century, for string, stiff but also light weight materials has forced engineers to reevaluate engineering materials.

Traditional materials were found not to be suitable for the aerospace industry and it has been necessary to return to the origins of structural materials but this time to follow the example of the animate world. As a consequence fibre-reinforced composite materials have been produced and are rapidly finding ever-increasing numbers of applications.

A fibre is a long fine filament of matter with a diameter generally of the order of ten µm. Fibres such as cotton, wool, flax and silk were the most important. The desire to produce cheap silk rather than to start a revolution in engineering was behind the efforts to produce synthetic fibres. Despite efforts by various researchers from Renaissance times it was not until the nineteenth century that any real progress was made. Workers in Great Britain and France found means of dissolving natural cellulose and then extruding it through holes to produce filaments. The first commercial exploitation of these regenerate fibres was in France where a patent was awarded to Count Hilaire de Chardonnet in 1885 for the first successful production of rayon. This was the beginning of a revolution in fibre technology. These fibres a re described as being regenerated, as the process makes use of the long cellulosic macromolecules which form the basis of most plants.

From the end of the nineteenth century rayon fibres were made from cellulose obtained from wood. Rayon fibres were based on the long-chain cellulose molecules existing in the original wood pulp. Although these fibres were originally intended to be used as artificial silk they quickly found a major application in the carcasses of tyres for the developing automobile industry.

Tyres, today, represent perhaps the most advanced form of composite structure combining several different types of fibres arranged precisely in a clastomeric matrix.

The 1930’s sawthe beginning of wholly synthetic fibres with the commercial development of glass and polyamide fibres in the U.S.A.

Notes:

string – волокнистий, натягнутий;

stiff – жорсткий, нееластичний;

of the order of ten µm – близько 10µm;

effort – зусилля;

extrude – видавлювати;

tyre – шина, покришка