Drying Technology

An International Journal

ISSN: 0737-3937 (Print) 1532-2300 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ldrt20

Quick-Dryability of Various Quick-Drying Polyester

and Wool Fabrics Assessed by a Novel Method

Mohammad Mahbubul Hassan & Samuel James Leighs

To cite this article: Mohammad Mahbubul Hassan & Samuel James Leighs (2016): Quick-
Dryability of Various Quick-Drying Polyester and Wool Fabrics Assessed by a Novel Method,
Drying Technology, DOI: 10.1080/07373937.2016.1195405

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07373937.2016.1195405

Accepted author version posted online: 01

Jul 2016.
Published online: 01 Jul 2016.

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 Quick-Dryability of Various Quick-drying Polyester and Wool Fabrics Assessed by
a Novel Method

Mohammad Mahbubul Hassan1, Samuel James Leighs1

1
Food & Bio-based Products Group, AgResearch Limited, Lincoln, Christchurch, New
Zealand

Correspondence: Mohammad Mahbubul Hassan, Food & Bio-based Products Group,

AgResearch Limited, Private Bag 4749, Cnr of Springs Road & Gerald Street, Lincoln,
Christchurch 7608, New Zealand. E-mail: mahbubul.hassan@agresearch.co.nz
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Abstract

Modern consumers of textiles are conscious about sustainability of the garments they are

wearing. Drying process is an energy intensive process that has an impact on

sustainability. There is no specific standard test method available to measure the

dryability of a fabric. Some of the test methods cited in the literature to measure the

quick-dryability use a method where a small quantity of water is placed on a dry fabric

sample and the time taken for the water to evaporate is measured. These methods are not

suitable for measuring the dryability of a washed fabric as in these test methods the

dryability depends solely on the wicking property of that fabric. In the work presented

here, we are proposing a new test method to measure the real dryability of textile fabrics.

When examined by this proposed method, it was found that some of the commercially

available so-called quick-drying polyester fabrics showed poor dryability. The surface of

examined fabrics was characterised by measuring contact angle and also by ATR-FTIR,

which reveals the reasons behind their poor dryability. This proposed method could be

used in industry to measure the quick-dryability of various fabrics.

1
 KEYWORDS: quick-drying; test method; textile fabrics; contact angle; FTIR

INTRODUCTION

Drying involves the removal of relatively small amounts of water that remain in the

fabric after squeezing or hydro-extraction. The amount of water remaining in a fabric

depends of the thickness, structure such as size and shape of pores of the fabric and also
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the chemical interaction between the water molecules and the surface of that fabric [1–3].

If the fabric is hydrophilic, then during wetting of the fabric it will absorb more water and

also retain more water during hydro-extraction than a hydrophobic fabric. In the process

of drying, heat is necessary to evaporate water or moisture from the fibre in a fabric and a

flow of air is needed to carry away the evaporated water/moisture. There are two basic

mechanisms involved in the drying process of textiles: the migration of moisture from the

interior of an individual fibre in the fibre assembly of a fabric to the outer surface of the

fibre, and the evaporation of the moisture from the surface to the surrounding

environment. The rate of drying is determined by the moisture content of the particular

fibre, the drying temperature, the relative humidity and the velocity of the air in contact

with the fibre.

Fourt et al. found that if various types of fabrics contain the same quantity of water, all

fabrics dry at the same rate if the drying conditions are same [4]. However, they found

that the time of drying depends upon the amount of water originally held in the fabric,

which is dependent on the molecular characteristics of that fabric and depending on that

factor, some fabric dry faster than the others. Some natural fabrics such as jute and wool

2
 have high moisture contents and therefore during washing they absorb a large quantity of

water and after squeezing or hydro-extraction they retain comparatively more water than

a hydrophobic fabric. On the other hand, some hydrophobic synthetic fibres made from

polyester and polypropylene fibres absorb very little water during washing and therefore

dry quickly.
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Wet clothes are uncomfortable next to our body skin due to the lower thermal insulation

of wet clothes and the evaporative cooling that occurs while being worn. Therefore it is

necessary to dry the clothes before wearing. Comfort is one of the decision making

factors that affect the buying behaviour of consumers. Clothing is known as the second

skin and therefore clothing intended for next-to-skin applications shouldn’t feel wet. If

the clothing worn becomes wet, it should dry very quickly otherwise it would be

uncomfortable. Sports apparel having quick drying properties is becoming increasingly

popular. Synthetic fibres (mainly polyester) are the dominant fibres used in this kind of

apparel as they dry rapidly as well as managing quick moisture transfer. The moisture

content of polyester is only 0.4% whereas the moisture content of wool is 15 to 25%,

depending on the relative humidity.

Traditionally household clothing are dried outside in the air under sun, with the drying

rate enhanced by the velocity of the air flow (wind) along with the intensity of solar

irradiation, i.e. drying very much depends on the weather conditions. Because of

increasing lack of space and sufficient sunshine, in some countries in the urban areas,

clothes are usually machine dried at home or at a commercial laundry by using electric

3
 driers. If the fabric has poor dryability, it will take longer than usual to dry in the drying

machine, which will eventually increase the energy demand and carbon footprint.

According to the Textile Rental Service Association (TRSA) of America, a laundry uses

1.80 kWh/kg of energy for garment washing and drying; of which 65% is for drying

[5,6]. If the energy consumed in drying could be reduced by 10% at a laundry facility this

would result in total energy reduction of 1309,651 kWh and savings of $57,257 annually
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(assuming a facility handling 11.35 million kilograms/year at 1.76 kWh/kilogram and the

energy price is $0.04/kWh). A load of wet laundry weighing 130 kg contains

approximately 65 kg (50%) of water, which must be evaporated before the laundry is

considered "dry" and can be moved to other processing steps such as ironing or folding

[6]. Thus the reduction of water absorption of textiles can significantly shorten their

drying time and the energy demand.

A range of so-called quick-drying polyester fabrics based on high wicking surface

treatment are commercially available. In reality they may absorb more water and may

take longer to dry than a traditional polyester fabric. Therefore there is no guarantee that

these fabrics after washing will dry faster than other normal fabrics and reduce energy

bills related to drying. The following test methods are used to measure the quick-

dryability of a fabric:

(i) TTRI Method FTTS-FA-004: Requirements of Moisture Transferring and Quick

Drying Textiles

4
 (ii) AATCC Test Method 200-2013, Drying Rate of Textiles at their Absorbent

Capacity: Air Flow method

(iii) AATCC Test Method 201-2013, Drying Rate of Fabrics: Heated Plate Method

(iv) JIS L 1096-2010: Testing Methods for Woven and Knitted Fabrics

The quick-drying textiles are used next-to-body and the human body temperature is 37
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°C. Therefore all of these test methods (except the TTRI method) measure dryability of

fabrics at that temperature. In the TTRI method, developed by the Taiwan Textile

Research Institute, a predetermined size of fabric is cut from a fabric conditioned for 48

hours at 20±2 °C and 65% relative humidity (RH). The fabric sample is placed flat on the

weighing pan of a digital balance, 0.2 ml water is placed at the middle of the sample by a

micropipette from 1 cm above the centre of the fabric and the weight loss is monitored

over time at 20±2 °C and 65% RH. The AATCC Test Method 201-2013 is similar to the

TTRI method except the fabric is placed on a plate heated at 37 °C. JIS method is also

similar to the TTRI method except different volume of water is placed on a fabric. The

AATCC Method 200 is quite different from the other mentioned methods. In this method,

the fabric sample is mounted on a circular opening. A flow of air heated at a

predetermined temperature is passed through the fabric and the temperature of the air is

maintained. The drying rate is measured by gravimetric method under the continuous

flow of conditioned air.

All of these above methods favour strongly wicking textiles and do not represent

assessment of real quick-dryability as the fabric samples are not completely wet in these

5
 methods. They use very small quantity of water and because of high wicking property of

the fabric the water spread and dries quickly. It could be argued that the terminology used

for these tests should be changed to ‘assessment of moisture management’ rather than

‘quick-dryability’. At this moment, there is no standard test method available to measure

the real quick-dryability that will show the benefit in energy saving in drying of textiles.

In this article, we are reporting a novel test method for the measurement of real quick-
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dryability of textile fabrics and compared the results with the quick-dryability assessed by

the TTRI method. The surface of various fabrics was characterised by attenuated total

reflectance – Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (ATR-FT-IR) and also by contact

angle measurement.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Materials

Fabric made with various types of fibres, blends and various constructions were procured

from various sources. The wool fabric used in this work, is an untreated wool fabric, i.e.

no shrink-resist treatment was applied. Sandozin MRN, a non-ionic wetting agent, was

purchased from Clariant Chemicals Limited (Switzerland). The specifications of the

fabrics examined are shown in Table 1.

Assessment Of Quick-Dryability By TTRI Method

The assessment of quick-dryability of fabrics was carried out at standard testing

conditions, i.e. 20 ±2 °C and 65±2% relative humidity. A 5 cm × 5 cm square size

specimen was cut from the fabric and it was conditioned at the above standard conditions

6
 for 48 hours. The fabric was placed on a pan of a 4-decimal point microbalance with the

face of the fabric upward and the dry weight of the fabric (Wf) was recorded in grams.

0.2 ml water was then placed at the middle of the sample by a micropipette from 1 cm

above the centre of the fabric, and immediately the wet weight (Wo) was recorded. The

change of the weight of the fabric (Wi) at the ith minute (i=10, 20, 30, etc. minutes) was

recorded in 10 min intervals continuously for the 100-minute observation. The

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‘Remained Water Ratio (RWR)’ was calculated by the formula to express the change of

water remaining in the specimen by specified time, to draw the evaporation curve from

100% to 0%. The formula is as follows:

Water remaining in the fabric, WR   Wi  Wf  /  Wo  Wf  100 [1]

Assessment was done according to the method described above. At least three tests were

carried out for each type of fabric and the average was reported here.

Assessment Of Quick-Dryability By Our Method

The assessment of quick-dryability was carried out at 37±1 °C and 50±2% relative

humidity in a Contherm Humidity Cabinet (Contherm Scientific Limited, Upper Hutt,

New Zealand). A battery-powered, four digit microbalance was placed inside the cabinet.

Five fabric samples of 1.748 g were cut from each type of fabric. The samples were

conditioned at 37±1 °C and 50±2% relative humidity for 24 hours and their dry weight

was measured (Wf). Each sample was then placed into a 200 ml solution of distilled water

containing 5 drops of Sandozin MRN (wetting agent) for five minutes. The sample was

then removed, immediately weighed, and placed into a 50 ml centrifuge tube. The tube

had a metal sieve placed in the bottom to prevent the samples from contacting the

7
 extracted excess liquid collected at the bottom. The centrifuge was set to 2000 rpm for 30

s. The sample was immediately transferred to the Contherm Cabinet and the weight was

recorded (Wi). The oven dry weight (Wf) was measured separately by drying the fabric at

105±2 °C until constant weight was observed. The change of weight (Wo) of the samples

was then recorded at 10 minute intervals, until the weight was equal to the dry weight of

the fabric. The water remaining in the fabric sample (%) was calculated according the
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following equation:

Water remaining in the fabric, WR   Wo  Wf  /  Wi  Wf  100 [2]

For each fabric type, five measurements were conducted and the average is reported here.

The moisture regain of the control and the various treated wool fabrics was assessed

according to ISO Test Method 6741-1987 at 20±2°C and 65±2% relative humidity. An

untreated wool fabric was used to assess the reliability and robustness of this proposed

test method. Five samples were cut and the quick-dryability for each sample was

measured.

Characterisation Of Surface Of Fabrics

The surface of various fabrics was characterised by ATR-FT-IR and also by contact

angle measurements. A Perkin Elmer Fourier transform infrared (FTIR; Model System

2000) spectroscope with an attenuated total reflectance (ATR) attachment using

zinc−selenium crystal was used for infrared studies to characterise the surface of various

fabrics. For each sample 64 scans were carried out and the averages are reported here.

KSV CAM 200 Contact Angle Measurement Apparatus (made by KSV Instruments,

Finland) was used to measure the contact angle. The contact angle calculation was

8
 performed by applying the spherical approximation of the drop by curve fitting based on

the Young-Laplace equation using the software (KSV CAM 200) supplied with the

equipment. For each sample, the contact angle was measured at 10 places and the average

contact angle was reported. For each sample, the first measurement was taken

immediately after placing the drop of water and then measurements were taken at 1 s

intervals for all samples up to 4 s except for sample ‘Sam1’ for which contact angle was
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measured at 20 s intervals up to 80 s.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Reliability Of The Quick-Drying Method

We are proposing a novel test method to assess the quick-dryability of various textile

fabrics. To check the reliability of the proposed quick-drying test method, five samples

were cut from a 2/2 twill wool fabric and their quick-dryability was measured in terms of

the water remaining in the fabric as a function of time. Statistical analysis of the results

obtained was carried out. Standard deviation (SD) and coefficient of variation (CV) of the

results obtained for five samples cut from the same fabric are shown in Table 2. The

quick-dryability of these wool fabrics samples is shown in Fig. 1. It is evident that very

negligible variation in quick-dryability was observed from sample to sample. Table 2

shows that the maximum CV observed was less than 4%, which indicates that that the

proposed test method is robust and produces reproducible results.

9
 Fig. 2 shows the quantity of water absorbed by samples cut from the same control fabric

and also water remaining in the fabric after hydro-extraction at 2000 rpm. The fabric

samples soaked in surfactant solution only absorbed a small quantity of water, of which

some portions were removed during hydro-extraction process. It is evident that the

quantity of water absorbed by various samples cut from the same control fabric was

consistent from sample to sample and the CV of the samples was only 1.8%. Similarly,
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the quantity of water remaining in the fabric after hydro-extraction for various samples

was also consistent (CV was only 1.6%). It is evident that water absorbed and water

remaining in the fabric samples after hydro-extraction are reproducible as the CV% was

very small. The achieved results indicate that the water absorbed, water remained in

fabric samples after the hydro-extraction and the assessed quick-dryability were

consistent from sample to sample.

Quick-Dryability Measured By The TTRI Method

The quick-dryability of 8 types of fabric samples made of four kinds of quick-dryable

polyester, wool fabric and blends were measured by the TTRI method as shown in Fig. 3.

It is evident that untreated wool fabric examined here showed very poor quick-dryability

and was the worst of all the types of fabrics investigated. It is not surprising as untreated

wool fabric used in this experiment had high surface hydrophobicity and poor wicking

properties. Therefore water droplet was not spread on the surface of fabric rather

remained as a droplet and therefore took long time to evaporate. On the other hand, in the

case of quick-drying polyester fabrics, the placed water immediately spread to large

surface of the fabric and evaporated quite quickly. Samples Sam7 (quick-drying polyester

10
 3) and Sam8 (quick-drying polyester 4) showed the best quick-dryability. Samples Sam4

and Sam5, made of Coolmax® blended with ordinary polyester fibre at various

percentages, also showed quick-dryability nearer to that of the samples Sam7 and Sam8.

Samples Sam2 and Sam3 showed slightly poor results compared to Sam4 and Sam5.

Sample Sam9 (quick-drying polyester 2) showed quite poor quick-dryability, which was

in between sample Sam8 and the wool fabric. The third poorest quick-dryability was
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shown by the thin plain-woven quick-drying polyester blended with ordinary polyester. It

is quite interesting that quick-dryability improved in the blended fabric with an increase

in share of the quick-drying polyester 1. It is quite interesting that of the fabric samples

investigated, sample Sam8 made with quick-drying polyester 4 was the heaviest but

showed the best quick-dryability. On the other hand sample Sam5 was the thinnest of the

fabrics studied, but was the third worst (only better than wool fabric and Sam6).

Quick-Dryability Measured By Our Proposed Method

Fig. 4 shows the quick-dryability measured of the same fabrics used in the measurement

of quick-dryability by TTRI method by our proposed method. It can be seen that the

quick-dryability measured by our method showed a different trend compared to the trend

shown for the TTRI method. Sam8 showed the best quick-dryability when it was

measured by the TTRI method but in our method, sample Sam6 showed the best and

Sam8 and Sam9 showed the worst quick-dryability. Wool fibre is one of the most

hygroscopic natural fibres as its moisture regain at standard atmospheric condition is

15%. However, it has an 18-methylecosanoic acid layer attached to the fibre surface by

thioester linkages that provide high surface hydrophobicity [7]. On the other hand,

11
 ordinary polyester fibre has one the lowest moisture regains. It is commonly perceived

that wool dries very slowly although the results achieved here show that wool fibre could

be dried faster than some of the quick-drying polyester fibres. To understand the quick-

dryability mechanism, it is necessary to study how fibre types affect their water

absorption and retention.

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Effect Of Fibre Types On Water Absorption And Retention

The chemical structure and surface properties of a polymeric fibre affects water

absorption capacity and also its water retention capacity after hydro-extraction; the

weaving structures also have an effect. Fig. 5 shows the quantity of water absorbed by

wool and various quick-drying polyester fabrics after soaking them in a surfactant

containing water for 10 minutes. It can be seen that samples Sam2 and Sam3 absorbed

the least quantity of water and it was only 1.45 g/g; both of the fabrics are made of 50%

wool and 50% Coolmax® fibre. Of the Coolmax®/ordinary polyester mixed fabrics,

water absorption capacity decreased with a decrease in the percentage of Coolmax® fibre

in the blended fabric. The fabric containing 57% Coolmax® fibre showed the highest

water absorption capacity and the lowest by the blended fabric containing 52%

Coolmax® fibre. Of the Supertex® quick-drying polyester fabrics, sample Sam8 showed

the highest water absorption and Sam9 showed the lowest water absorption. The amount

of water absorbed by wool fabric was similar to the amount absorbed by sample Sam5.

The water retention after hydro-extraction followed the same trend observed for water

absorption. Of all the samples investigated, Sam6 showed the lowest water absorption

and also retention after hydro-extraction. On the other hand, sample Sam9 showed the

12
 highest water absorption and also water retention after hydro-extraction. It can be seen

that fabric thickness has an effect on water absorption and post-hydro-extraction water

retention capacity as in samples Sam7-9, they were increased with an increase in g/m2 of

the fabric.

Dynamic Surface Contact Angle

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Table 3 shows dynamic surface contact angle of wool, various quick-drying polyester

fabrics and their blends with wool. It is evident that wool fabrics are quite hydrophobic as

it showed the highest contact angle of the fabrics investigated. Quick-drying polyesters

are so hydrophilic that for some of them it was difficult to measure the contact angle as

the water droplet spread within less than a second after placing them on the fabric. The

surface of wool fabric was so hydrophobic that even after 80 s the contact angle didn’t

diminish. Wool fibre/Coolmax® blend fabrics (Sam2 and Sam3) showed some surface

hydrophobicity but for both of them contact angle became 0 within 4 s. All

Coolmax®/ordinary polyester blend fabric showed excellent surface hydrophilicity and it

was not possible to measure their contact angle. On the other hand, Supertex® quick-

drying polyesters also showed hydrophilicity similar to the hydrophilicity shown by

Coolmax®/ordinary polyester blend fabrics.

ATR-FTIR Spectroscopy

Fig. 6 shows the FTIR spectra of wool, wool/Coolmax®, polyester/Coolmax® and

Supertex® quick-drying polyester fabrics. The spectrum of Sam1 (untreated wool) shows

the absorbency peak at 1627 cm−1 which can be assigned to the elastic vibration peak of

13
 the C=O (amide I) and the peak at 1506 cm−1 is labelled as the C–N stretching and N–H

in-plane bending vibrations (amide II) [8]. The spectrum of untreated wool (Sam1) also

shows a broad peak at 3100−3400 cm−1, which could be attributed to hydroxyl groups,

and a weak band at 1223 cm-1, which related to C–N and C–H stretching vibrations

(amide III) [9,10]. Sample Sam2 (wool/Coolmax® blend) shows a weak hydroxyl band at

3100−3400 cm-1 which is coming from the wool fabric as it is a 50/50 blend of
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Coolmax® and wool fibres. It is quite interesting that the spectra of the quick-drying

polyester fabrics show no hydroxyl group peak at 3100−3400 cm-1 although they show

super-hydrophilicity. They may have other hydrophilic groups that are conferring their

hydrophilicity. The spectra of all of the quick-drying polyester fabrics look similar and

they have peaks at 722, 970, 1016, 1093, 1238, 1338, 1407, 1506, 1710, and 2960 cm-1.

The weak band at 2960 cm-1 could be attributed to the stretching vibrations symmetrical

and unsymmetrical vibrations of C-H [11]. The bands at 1016, 1510 and 1710 cm-1 are

related to the stretching vibrations of sulfonic acid, -C=C aromatic and carboxylic acid

groups respectively. The IR spectra indicate that the super-hydrophilicity shown by

various quick-drying polyesters are due the presence of hydrophilic carboxyl and

sulfonate groups on their surface.

CONCLUSIONS

We demonstrated a novel test method to measure the actual quick-dryability of textile

fabrics. The quick-dryability measurement was repeated five times and the standard

deviation of the quick-drying results were within an acceptable range. We measured the

quick-dryability of several quick-drying polyester and wool fabrics using this new

14
 method. Because of high moisture regain, wool fabrics usually dry quite slowly.

However, it was found that some of the commercially available so-called quick-drying

polyester fabrics performed quite badly compared to wool fabric. A quick-drying

polyester fabric showed the best quick-dryability when assessed by the TRRI developed

test method, but when examined by our proposed method, it performed the worst in terms

of quick-dryability and was even poorer than the wool fabric. Fabrics made from
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Coolmax® polyester fibre blended with wool or ordinary polyester performed well in

both of the test methods investigated. When measured by our proposed test method, it

was found that the quick-dryability rate decreased with an increase in Coolmax® fibre in

the blend fabrics. The more the fabric is hydrophilic the more it absorbs water and takes

longer to dry. This proposed method could be used in industry to compare the quick-

dryability of various fabrics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment

(MBIE) of the New Zealand Government thorough Grant C10X0824. Stewart Collie

(AgResearch) helped in the improvement of the manuscript.

REFERENCES

1. Fangueiro, R.; Filgueiras, A.; Soutinho, F.; Meidi, X. Wicking behaviour and

drying capability of functional knitted fabrics. Text. Res. J. 2010, 80, 1522-1530.

15
 2. Chen, D.; Tan, L.; Liu, H.; Tang, F.; Hu, J.; Li, Y. Fabrication of fast-absorbing

and quick-drying wool fabrics with good washing durability. ChemSusChem 2010, 3,

1031-1035.

3. Wang, F.; Zhou, X.; Wang, S. Development processes and property

measurements of moisture absorption and quick dry fabrics. Fiber. Textil. East. Eur.

2009, 17, 46-49.

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4. Fourt, L.; Sookne, A. M.; Frishman, D.; Harris, M. The rate of drying of fabrics.

Text. Res. J. 1951, 21, 26−33.

5. Jennman, A. I. Knowledge is Power – A Look at Energy saving Equipment

Options, Textile Rental Services Association Newsletter, www.trsa.org/.h2e/Power.asp.

[6] Case study: Energy Efficient Technology, May 2007,

www.eecabusines.govt.nz/eib/case-studies/documents/cls-07.pdf.

7. Dyer, J.; Grosvenor, A. In: Natural Dyes, Kumbasar A. K. (Ed.): InTech

Publishing: Rijeka, Croatia, 2011; p 111.

8. Valko, E. I.; Tesoro, G. C.; Ginilewicz. Elimination of static electricity from

textiles by chemical finishing. Am. Dyest. Rep. 1958, 47, 403−407.

9. Hassan, M. M. Enhanced antistatic and mechanical properties of corona plasma

treated wool fabrics treated with 2,3-epoxypropyltrimethylammonium chloride. Ind. Eng.

Chem. Res. 2014, 53, 10954−10964.

10. Wang, K.; Li, R.; Ma, J. H.; Jian, Y. K.; Che, J. N. Extracting keratin from wool

by L-cysteine. Green Chem. 2016, 18, 476−481.

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 11. Gupta, B.; Hilborn, J.; Hollenstein, C. H.; Plummer, C. J. G.; Houriet, R.;

Xanthopoulos, N. Surface modification of polyester films by RF plasma. J. Appl. Polym.

Sci. 2000, 78, 1083-1091.

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17
 Table 1 Specifications of fabrics used

Sample Fibre type Structure Ends/cm or Picks/cm or Weight/m2

ID course/cm wale/cm (g)

Sam1 100% Wool 2/2 twill 28 26 190.0

woven

Sam2 50% Wool/50% Plain woven 24 21 155.7

Coolmax®
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Sam3 50% Wool/50% Plain woven 24 20 152.7

Coolmax ®

Sam4 57% Coolmax®/43% 2/2 twill 69 33 158.0

polyester woven

Sam5 53% Coolmax®/43% 2/2 twill 81 34 170.0

polyester woven

Sam6 52% Coolmax®/48% Plain woven 68 50 142.0

polyester

Sam7 100% Supertex® quick- Double 20 18 151.9

drying polyester 1 jersey knit

Sam8 100% Supertex® quick- Double 12 12 197.2

drying polyester 2 jersey knit

Sam9 100% Supertex® quick- Double 16 15 228.0

drying polyester 3 Jersey knit

18
 Table 2 Reliability of the developed test method assessed by measuring the quick-

dryability of a wool fabric

Drying time (min) Water remaining in the fabric (%) Mean SD CV(%)

Ctrl1 Ctrl2 Ctrl3 Ctrl4 Ctrl5

100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0

0
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82.90 83.65 82.75 81.10 83.85 82.85 1.08 1.31

10

66.46 67.70 67.90 67.30 68.35 67.54 0.71 1.05

20

52.05 52.45 51.75 53.10 52.00 52.27 0.53 1.01

30

37.50 38.30 38.40 37.8 38.50 38.10 0.43 1.12

40

24.05 24.30 23.60 24.10 24.20 24.05 0.27 1.12

50

10.70 10.66 11.30 10.45 11.00 10.82 0.33 3.06

60

3.90 4.22 4.10 3.83 4.10 4.03 0.16 3.98

70

2.15 2.10 2.12 2.10 1.95 2.08 0.08 3.73

80

1.50 1.58 1.57 1.46 1.50 1.52 0.05 3.36

90

1.00 1.05 0.95 0.99 1.01 1.00 0.04 3.61

100

19
 Downloaded by [Library Services City University London] at 22:54 03 July 2016

120
110

0
0
0.413 0.39

0
0.40

20
0.42

0
0.39

0
0.40

0
0
0.01 3.13
 Table 3 Dynamic surface contact angle of wool and various quick-drying polyester

fabrics

Average contact angle at

Sam
0s 1 s* 2s 3s 4s
ID.

Sam

1
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120.0 120.0 119.6 120.0 119.8

Sam

58.5 44.3 32.7 24.3 0

Sam

87.5 40.0 26.5 11.8 0

Sam

4
0 0 0 0

Sam

5
0 0 0 0

Sam

Sam

7
0

Sam

8
0

21
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*
9
Sam

22
For Sam1 measurements were taken at 20 s intervals
 Figure 1. Quick-dryability of wool fabrics samples cut from the same fabric.
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 Figure 2. Variation in water absorbed by the fabric samples after wetting them in water

and the water remaining in the fabric after the hydro-extraction for the control fabric. The

CV for the water absorbed and water remaining in the fabric after hydro-extraction was

1.8% and 1.6% respectively.

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 Figure 3. Quick-dryability of fabrics made with various types of fibers measured by the

TTRI method.
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 Figure 4. Quick-dryability of fabrics made with various types of fibers by our proposed

method.
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 Figure 5. Water remaining in the fabric after hydro-extraction for the same weight of

various types of fabrics.

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 Figure 6. ATR-FTIR spectra of surface of wool and various quick-drying polyester

fabrics.
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