Influence of finishing process on properties of knitted ramie fabric

Knitted ramie fabrics present strong scratchness during wear.The paper briefly discusses the reason leading to scratchness and how to reduce it.We adopted three kinds of finishing process——the shearing-softening agent treatment(combined treatment),cellulase-softening agent treatment,and softening agent treatment to finish knitted ramie fabric respectively.The basic properties of the treated fabrics such as stitch density,surface density,tensile strength along with the wale direction,draping,pilling resistance,wrinkle recovery and scratchness were tested.The experimental results show that these finishing processes can reduce the scratchness of knitted ramie fabrics,but will deteriorate the basic properties of the fabrics,especially the tensile strength.It is found through analytical comparison that the shearing-softening agent treatment was the most effective one in reducing the scratchness of knitted ramie fabrics,but with great impact on the mechanical properties of the fabrics.