Production of thermally stable polypropylene fibers

✍ Scribed by Y. Qin; D. L. Brydon; R. R. Mather

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 485 KB
• Volume: 61
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4628(19960822)61:8<1287::aid-app8>3.0.co;2-g

✦ Synopsis

TD1 3HF, Scotland SYNOPSIS Polypropylene (PP) fibers were made with a number of different processing conditions, such as one-stage drawing, two-stage drawing, and a combination of drawing, annealing, and relaxation. The thermal stability of these fibers in terms of shrinkage in length at 100, 130, and 150'C was studied. It was found that the thermal shrinkage can be greatly improved with multi-stage drawing and with annealing. The fibers that were two-stage-drawn, relaxed, and then annealed remained stable at 130°C while still having a fiber tenacity in excess of 0.8 N/tex. Thermal stability a t 150°C was more difficult to improve. However, the fibers that were drawn in three stages with a final drawing temperature of 185'C showed thermal shrinkage a t 150°C of less than 10%. Finally, it was found that the thermal shrinkage of PP fibers a t 150°C can be greatly reduced by blending a minor component of a liquid crystal polymer into the PP fibers. With two-stage drawing and annealing, fibers with shrinkage at 150'C of only 2.9% were produced.