Study On Properties Of Sponge/Spunlace Nonwovens Composite Material For Wipes

According to the development of wipes market in past few years, it turns out that wipes market is trending to diversity of products. Only new concept products can stimulate the next high growth of this market. The composite wipes discussed here could be potentially applied on baby wipes, wipes for cleaning smooth surface and for cars.Foreign companies can already produce foaming-online wipe now, which has good properties due to its foam surface. But because of its difficult process, the investment of technique and facility is huge. So this paper is trying the way of compounding spunlace materials and sponge to achieve the similar effect. The sponge used here is soft and coherent without fragments during rubbing, and with good liquid absorbing- keeping ability. But for its poor dimensional stability, it needs spunlace materials as reinforcement to satisfy the requirements of wipes. So the main goals of this test are to try different processes to combine those two materials, to find which one is the best way and to research the properties of composite wipes.For maximal dimensional stability, three kinds of spunlace materials have been chosen based on the different fibers as follows: 100% viscose water-jetting nonwoven fabric (83.6g/m~2), 50/50 polyester/viscose blending fibers water-jetting nonwoven fabric (61.3g/m~2) and 100% polyester water-jetting nonwoven fabric (61.5 g/m~2). They would be bound with sponge by polyurethane adhesive on dry condition.Based on a large number of experiments and analysis, this paper gets such results: on one hand, the mechanical properties of composite wipes are improved. Its strength and dimensional ability are far better than sponge and meet the needs of wipes. On the other hand, its surface character is also better than the original sponge. Also the analysis shows the influences of different bonding condition as the following:1. Influences of binding proportion: the composite wipes have higher strength more than the sum of spunlace and sponge strength because of the adhesion forces of adhesive. When the proportion of bond is up, the wipes' strength and rigidity are increased and its dimensional stability is improved, but its liquid absorbing ability and its softness show the opposite. The wearing resistance of 40% binding proportion sample is better than 20% proportion and 80% proportion ones.2. Influences of same proportion bond but different binding patterns: the strength of the sample with smaller binding points is better than the one with bigger binding points, but the liquid absorbing ability and wearing resistance decrease.