Fiber Quality Preservation in Lint Cleaning: Understanding and Modeling Fiber Friction

The lint-cleaning process is known to cause fiber breakage and entanglement. The main mechanism governing most physical interactions between fiber and machine parts is friction, either in the form of inter-fiber friction or friction between fibrous assemblies and rigid surfaces. We conducted sliding friction experiments on bulk-fiber samples of forty-eight varieties of cotton. Results indicate that fiber friction can significantly vary across different cotton varieties. Multilinear regression analysis showed that fiber friction is a complex phenomenon that depends on fiber dimensional, mechanical, and surface attributes, indicating that multiple friction mechanisms (adhesion, deformation, and lubrication) are involved in the friction effects between cotton fiber assemblies and a given nominally flat surface. A simulation model was developed to help explain the relationships between fiber dimensional properties and static fiber frictional characteristics. Relationships were established between the internal structure of a fibrous assembly and the contact area that it makes with a flat surface. Results from this simulation model were in agreement with experimental observations