The Effect of Heat-Setting Conditions on the Performance Characteristics of Warp Knitted Spacer Fabrics

Spacer fabrics can be produced by using weaving or nonwoven techniques besides warp and weft knitting processes. Warp knitted spacer fabrics are produced by using polyester multifilament and monofilament yarns for surface layers and spacer yarn, respectively. After knitting process, surface layers of these fabrics are in the closed form. Then these fabrics are subjected to a heat-setting treatment in order to increase their structural stability and to achieve an open form with holes. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the effect of heat-setting conditions on the performance characteristics of the warp knitted spacer fabrics. Mass per unit area, thickness, air permeability, compressibility, dimensional stability and compression set properties were measured and evaluated statistically in order to determine the effects of heat-setting conditions such as temperature, duration of heat-setting and stretching (the tension applied to the samples during heat-setting) on the performance characteristics. The results revealed that, heat-setting process has significant effect on all measured performance characteristics of the samples. After heat-setting process, air permeability and compressibility values increases while mass per unit area and compression set values decreases.