Effect of Chemicals and Binders On the Durability of Flame Retardant Treated Cotton Nonwovens

EFFECT OF CHEMICALS AND BINDERS ON THE DURABILITY OF FLAME  RETARDANT TREATED COTTON  NONWOVENS
Hatice Mercimek and Gajanan Bhat
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
and
Janet O’Regan, Cotton Incororated, Cary, NC
Abstract
Most of the approaches to produce flame retardant (FR) cotton-based nonwovens are not durable to washing. For some of the applications wash durability is desired, and we are conducting research to develop some semi-durable FR treatments in an economical way. The approach is to produce cotton nonwoven webs using a binder fiber, going through the through-air bonding process, and treating them with commercially available FR chemicals and binders. Care is being taken to select the combination of flame retardants and binders such that some degree of permanency can be achieved. These treated webs have been evaluated for their FR characteristics before and after washing. Both, selected FR chemical and the binder, have an effect on the durability of the produced webs. A neural network model is being developed to understand these  effects, so that it can help in selecting the best combination for optimum FR performance. This model sheds light on the unknown behavior of the FR  characteristics through learning input-output relationship from experinemtal data. Using this learnt behavior a flame retardant function is approximated nonlinearly. Also, the importance of each parameter with respect to flammability test results are revealed through a statistical software.