Research On Influence Of Silk’s Performance Under Different Aging Environments

Silk is the traditional treasure of our country, and many things such as ancient cultural relic and modern consumables are all related with it. However as one protein material, there exsit several serious influences on the protection of ancient silk and the use of modern silk textiles for some disadvantages of yellowing and aging, and so on. So it is an important to study on the subject aging characteristics and mechanism of silk for archaeologist and many researchers. In order to understand the aging characteristic of silk and determined the library collection conditions of‘National Costume Museum’in Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, the method of simulating aging was performed on modern silk fiber, and the aging rule ofsilk fiber was investigated in the thesis.Here three kinds of artificial aging methods (ultraviolet aging, heat aging and hydrolyzing aging) are adopted to deal with two kinds of silk fibres (mulberry silk and tussah silk). Structure and performance of silk fibers before and after aging treatment were studied by analyzing the samples using Infrared Spectrum, X-ray diffraction, amino acid analysis, Scanning Electron Microscope, Thermo Gravimetry-Derivative Thermo Gravimetry and mechanical properties analysis. The results show that: (1)The breaking strength of silk fibers after aging were decreased, and the phenomena of yellowing of silk fibers after ultraviolet aging and heat aging were observed. (2)The eroding stripes apppeared on the surface of silk fiber by different kinds of aging method. (3)Among the three kinds of aging method, as for effect on silk fiber, the ultraviolet aging is the most serious one, the heating aging also serious and the hydrolyzing aging is gentle. (4)The amount of amino acid in silk fibers after different kind of aging treatment were decreased in different degree, and the polar amino acids were more seriously decreased than nonpolar amino acids in silk fibers.This research provide not only the theory for anti-aging of ancient silk product, butalso the guidence for the use and protection for modern silk products.