Comparative study on compressional recovery performance of vertically laid and cross-laid highloft nonwovens

Vertically laid nonwoven fabrics are structurally different from conventional cross-laid nonwoven fabrics, resulting in an exceptional bulkiness and unique compressional recovery performance. In this paper, two testing methods (manual procedure vs. machine procedure) to determine bulky nonwoven thickness were first studied and statistically analyzed. Then, pore sizes of selected nonwoven samples were measured by a porosimeter to examine relationship between the pore size and nonwoven structural parameters. Finally, compressive properties of the nonwoven samples were measured by an Instron tester for assessment of main effects of nonwoven structural parameters in terms of thickness, gram weight, bulk density, and porosity on nonwoven compressional properties. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two thickness measurement methods, and the manual measurement was basically consistent with the machine measurement. Bubble point pore size and average flow pore size were correlated with the structure parameters in varied correlation coefficients. Compared to cross-laid nonwovens, vertically laid nonwovens exhibited a greater compressive energy and linearity and a lower compressive resilience.