Inspecting anisotropy in wrinkle recovery angle of woven fabric

In this paper, the anisotropic wrinkle recovery properties of plain and twill fabrics are explored by studying the variations of the wrinkle recovery angle with sample orientation angle. Orientation angle is the angle measured counterclockwise from the weft direction to the sample’s long axis, that is, the crease direction. This study focused on inspecting anisotropy in wrinkle recovery to find more effective test angles for different woven fabrics. A dynamic wrinkle recovery tester was used to measure the recovery angles of specimens automatically which were cut in various directions. The trend of plain fabrics shows that its recovery angle generally increases at first and then decreases with the increase in the orientation angle. The trend of twill fabrics differs in folding ways. The experimental results revealed that the wrinkle recovery angles of the woven fabrics had the lowest values near the orientation angles of 0° and 90°, i.e. the warp and weft directions, and therefore these two traditionally used directions in the standard test method did not best reflect the wrinkle recovery yielded from both warps and wefts. The diagonal direction (45°) was proven to be the optimal orientation angle for a balanced plain fabric, while the two orthogonal directions, i.e. the twill direction and its perpendicular direction, were found to be more relevant for a twill fabric. Optimal orientation angles used to test the wrinkle recovery angle of a woven fabric should be associated with its structure.