NOPR Collection:

Preparation and characterization of starch /cellulose composite

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Preparation and characterization of starch /cellulose composite Authors: Keshk, Sherif Mohamed Abdel Salam; Yousef, Elsayed; Omran, Ahemd Abstract: Novel preparative method for starch/cellulose composite in different ratios has been reported. The composite is obtained by mixing cellulose extracted from paper garbage and corn starch in PEG/NaOH solution. Starch/cellulose composite is characterized by different techniques, namely XRD, TGA and optical absorption measurements. From XRD data, it is observed that cellulose would lead to expand the d-spacing of (10 plane and decrease the d-spacing of (110) plane of starch. The UV absorption peaks are shifted towards the longest wavelengths in the visible region for starch/cellulose composite. However, the refractive index value decreases from 1.44 to 1.08 and consequently the dielectric constant value decreases from 2.07 to 1.16 with increasing the starch ratio. Furthermore, the glass transition temperature increases from 107°C for starch to 115 °C for starch/cellulose composite. However, the excess in starch ratio leads to increase in local crosslink density in the composite network. Page(s): 190-194

Capillary rise kinetics on woven fabrics – Experimental and theoretical studies

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Capillary rise kinetics on woven fabrics – Experimental and theoretical studies Authors: Hamdaoui, Mohamed; Nasrallah, Sassi Ben Abstract: Kinetics study of vertical water capillary rise on woven fabrics has been studied. Experiments are performed at 20±2°C and 65±2% RH by using a CCD camera and an electronic microbalance. A mathematical model is developed in order to interpret the experimental data in terms of diffusion parameters of water molecules on the porous materials and the height attained at equilibrium. The results show that the theoretical predictions are in reasonable agreement with experimental data with higher correlation coefficients. It is also found that kinetic parameters and the height of water attained at equilibrium are influenced by the composition (type of fibre) and the structure of the woven fabrics. It is concluded that the wicking ability is strongly enhanced with the decrease of the weft count (yarns/cm) and in the presence of higher float length of the weft yarns in the woven structure as in the case of satin 8/5. The sorption ability of the cotton fabrics has also been studied by using measurements of the mass of water absorbed by the textile. The results indicate that the satin structure, which is the less tightened one, has the best sorption ability. Page(s): 150-156

Antiseptic treatment for human foot wounds using piper betel extract finished bamboo/cotton fabrics

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Antiseptic treatment for human foot wounds using piper betel extract finished bamboo/cotton fabrics Authors: Ramya, K; Maheshwari, V Abstract: In this study, the extracts of Piper betel leaves have been obtained and finished on to the natural and regenerated bamboo/cotton knitted fabrics. The finished fabrics are assessed for the antibacterial activity against the selected pathogens Staphylococcus sp., Bacillus sp., Klebsiella sp., Pseudomonas sp., and Proteus sp., which are commonly present in the human foot wounds. The obtained results are compared with the untreated fabrics and also with the fabric samples treated with two antibiotics, viz Cefixime and Levofloxacin which are commonly used for the treatment of the foot wounds. The herbal extract treated fabrics show good antibacterial activity against the pathogens, which makes them to have an antiseptic property. To enhance the wash durability of the finished samples the herbal extracts are microencapsulated and their wash durability is assessed using the standard methods. Page(s): 213-216

Automatic pattern segmentation of jacquard warp-knitted fabric based on hybrid image processing methods

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Automatic pattern segmentation of jacquard warp-knitted fabric based on hybrid image processing methods Authors: Zhang, Yang; Jiang, Gaoming; Yao, Junzhou; Tong, Youcheng Abstract: This paper reports an automatic pattern separation approach for jacquard warp-knitted fabric, which includes bilateral filter, pyramidal wavelet decomposition and improved fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering. First, jacquard warp-knitted fabric images are captured and digitized by a scanner in gray mode, and then the bilateral filter is adopted to smoothen the fabric textures formed by various lapping movements of jacquard fabric and to reduce the noise appearing in capturing process. Next, multi-scale wavelet decomposition is applied to lessen calculation burden and to shorten computation time. Finally, the modified FCM clustering is proposed, in which the Mercer Kernel function is used to make some features prominent for clustering, and a weight function is proposed to measure the similarity between the data and the clustering center. The experimental results reveal that this hybrid method can achieve fast and accurate pattern segmentation. It is proved that this study is suitable for the pattern separation of jacquard warp-knitted fabric. Page(s): 208-212