Improving the Surface Electric Potential Measurement Capability for Textile Materials

The system currently employed for measuring the electric potential of the surface of textile fabrics consists in an electrostatic probe connected to an electrostatic voltmeter. The primary aim of the present work is to improve the capability of this measurement system, as evaluated by gauge repeatability and reproducibility studies. The experiments were conducted on samples of polypropylene non‐woven fabrics, electrostatically charged by exposing them to a negative corona discharge from a custom‐designed electrode system. A first series of fully operator‐controlled measurements pointed out the need to automatically control the relative position between the sample and probe, so that to eliminate the variability due to the non‐uniform structure of the non‐woven fabrics. The following series of partly automated experiments revealed that the repeatability and the reproducibility of the measurements are negatively affected by the decay of the electric potential at the surface of the samples. The best gauge capability is obtained when the measurements are delayed with respect to the moment of corona charging, in order to reduce the variability due to the fact that the samples characteristics change in time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.