Textiles Calculations

Integrated Design: MATS10250

Lecturer: Dr Bill Sampson

Office: C51b, Sackville Street Building
Email: w.sampson@manchester.ac.uk

These lecture notes are designed to accompany the slides used in lectures, which
you can download from BlackBoard.

Density
One of the fundamental properties of all materials is their density. Density
quantifies the mass per unit volume of a material, i.e. how heavy it is relative to how
much space it occupies. We are all familiar with density and how it affects whether
objects float or not: at room temperature, cooking oil has density of about 900 kg/m3,
whereas water has density of 1000 kg/m3, so the oil has a lower density than water
and therefore floats on water. Density applies to solid materials also: steel has a
density of about 8000 kg/m3, whereas aluminium has a density of about 2600 kg/m3,
so if we have two bars of these metals that are the same size, then the greater
density of steel means that the steel bar will be heavier.

Before looking at density, and the use of density to characterise textiles materials, it
is helpful to look at how we quantify density. We have said that density quantifies
the mass per unit volume of a material, we can write this as
mass of an object
density = (1)
volume of the object
As long as we stay on one planet (earth is a sensible choice) we can be comfortable
using the terms mass and weight interchangeably. This isn’t rigorously correct, but it
helps our understanding, so when we discuss the mass of an object, we can think of
this being how much it weighs.
When we weigh things in every day life, we often still use pounds, ounces, stones,
etc. Scientists prefer to quantify the mass of objects in kilograms, or sometimes
grams or micrograms. Similarly, we may measure length in inches, feet or miles, but
scientists prefer metres, kilometres, centimetres, etc. When we talk about how long
something is, we should always say what measurement we are using: Bill Sampson is
6 feet tall, not 6 metres! We call the information that we include with such numbers
in order that we know what measuring system, the units.
If we stick with using metres to measure length for now then we recall that the area
of an object is measured in square metres, which we denote m2; the volume of an
object is measured in cubic metres, which we write m3.
We can now write Equation (1) including some units:
mass of an object (kg)
density = (2)
volume of the object (m 3 )
This is the same as:
mass of an object (kg)
density = × 3 (3)
volume of the object (m )
To get to Equation (3), we have just collected the units together. We can now say
that the units of density are kg/m3, which we say as “kilograms per metre cubed” or
“kilograms per cubic metre”, this can also be written as kg m-3. Our final form of the
equation to calculate density is therefore
mass of an object (kg)
density (kg/m3 ) = (4)
volume of the object (m 3 )
Let’s assume that we have a plank of wood that is 2 m long, 20 cm wide and 5 cm
thick; the plank weighs 12 kg. To work out the density of the wood, we need to use
Equation (4). The mass of our plank is 12 kg, but before we can use Equation (4) we
need to work out its volume. The volume of the plank is given by its length multiplied
by its width multiplied by its thickness, i.e.
Volume of plank = 2 m × 20 cm × 5 cm
It’s a good idea to convert all these dimensions to metres:
Volume of plank = 2 m × 20 cm × 5 cm
= 2 m × 0.20 m × 0.05 m
= 0.02 m3
We can now calculate the density of our piece of wood:
12 (kg)
density =
0.02 (m 3 )
12 (kg) 100
= 3
×
0.02 (m ) 100
1200 (kg)
=
2 (m 3 )
= 600 kg/m3
This is less than the density of water, so we’d expect out plank to float!
Density of fabrics
Sometimes it isn’t so easy to work out the volume of a material. This is often the
case with thin sheet-like materials like textiles when we can usually work out the
area quite easily but the thickness can be harder to define. There are two problems
in measuring thickness:
• it usually isn’t uniform, but varies from region to
region because of the weave or knit;
• the fabric is usually compressible, making it difficult
to measure thickness without squashing it.
To overcome this, we don’t usually characterise fabrics by their density, but instead
use their area density. This is defined as the mass per unit area of the material and
is given by
mass of an object (kg)
area density (kg/m2 ) = (5)
area of the object (m2 )
The density with units kg/m3 is sometimes called the bulk density. If you’re ever
unsure which density is being referred to, check the units.
Let’s assume that we have a piece of cotton fabric that weighs 1.2 kg; the fabric is
1.5 m wide and 4 m long. We calculate its area density using Equation (5):
1.2 (kg)
area density =
4 (m) × 1.5 (m)
1.2 (kg)
=
6 (m2 )
= 0.2 kg/m2
There are 1000 grams in a kilogram, so the area density of our cotton fabric is
(1000 × 0.2) g/m2 = 200 g/m2. These units of grams per square are often preferred
to describe the area density of textiles; sometimes they are written ‘gsm’ or `g m-2’.

Linear density
We have a similar problem when trying to characterise the density of yarns and
fibres. Fibres often have non-uniform size and shape of cross-section along their
length. Yarns are made of many fibres close together and have small gaps between
them. A convenient property to characterise yarns and fibres is their mass per unit
length. We call this the linear density. It is given by
mass of an object (kg)
linear density (kg/m) = (6)
length of the object (m)
Let’s assume that we have a ball of string that contains 1 km of string and weighs
100 g. We calculate its linear density using Equation (6):
 100 (g)
linear density =
1 (km)
0.1 (kg)
=
1000 (m)
= 0.0001 kg/m
This is a very small number, and this makes it hard to imagine exactly what it means
in the real world. In this case, it would probably be better to use the units that we
started out with, and to say that the string has a linear density of 100 g/km.
Yarns and fibres are normally much thinner than our string, so normally we prefer to
weigh quite a long length of yarn in order to work out its linear density.

Problems
1) Calculate the density of the following samples:
a) A block of plastic, 20 cm long, 10 cm wide and 5 cm thick that
weighs 1 kg.
b) A cubic block of metal with sides measuring 5 cm that weighs 1 kg.
c) A rod of aluminium with diameter 1 cm and length 50 cm that weighs
106 g.
2) Calculate the mass of the following objects:
a) A block of plastic 10 cm long, 5 cm wide and 2 cm thick made from
nylon that has a density of 1100 kg/m3.
b) A dice with sides measuring 1 cm made from wood with density
700 kg/m3.
c) A cube of steel (density 8000 kg/m3) of side 5 cm with a hole of
diameter 1 cm drilled through it.
3) Calculate the area density of the following samples:
a) A rectangular piece of fabric 2 m wide and 10 m long that weighs 4kg.
b) A square piece of fabric with sides 1.5 m that weighs 225 g.
c) A piece of A4 photocopy paper (297 mm × 210 mm) that
weighs 5 g.
4) Calculate the linear density of the following samples:
a) 100 m of cotton yarn that weighs 15 g.
b) A polyester yarn that weighs 15 g and is 200 m long.

Remember to include the units for all your answers.