Non-woven fabrics are neither "woven fabrics" nor "knitted fabrics", but the types of fabrics are indeed much richer. A non-woven fabric is a fabric structure that is formed directly from fibers by bonding or interlocking or both. It does not have any organized geometric structure, but consists of short fibers or filaments that are oriented or randomly bonded into a network. It is like cloth with fabric characteristics, but it is different from what we wear on the body.

01 Fabrication method

There are two main methods of making non-woven fabrics: making and bonding. Felt nonwoven fabric is a non-cracking and non-abrasive thick felt cloth formed by layering thin fabrics and shrinking and compressing the fibers through heat, humidity, and pressure. There are three main methods of producing bonded nonwovens: dry spinning, wet spinning and direct spinning. During the production of drylaid nonwovens, the fiber web is placed in a drum and hot air is injected to bond the fibers together.

02 Application of nonwovens

No matter where you are sitting or standing right now, just look around and you are sure to find at least one product that uses nonwovens. Nonwovens are widely used in medical, clothing, automotive, filtration, construction, geotextiles and protection. With the increasing use of non-woven fabrics, such as non-woven masks, protective clothing worn by doctors, shopping bags, diapers for babies, etc., our current life will become unimaginable without them. There are two types of nonwovens: durable and disposable. About 60% of nonwovens are durable and the remaining 40% are discarded.

03 The textile industry is developing towards non-woven fabrics

Nonwovens are innovative, creative, versatile, high-tech, adaptable, essential and decomposable. This fabric is made directly from the fibers. Thus no step of preparing the yarn is required. The manufacturing process is simple and quick. It takes about 6 months to produce 500,000 meters of woven fabrics (2 months for yarn preparation, 3 months for weaving with 50 looms, 1 month for finishing inspection), and only 2 for the same amount of non-woven fabrics moon. Therefore, the production speed of the woven fabric is 1 m/min, the production speed of the knitted fabric is 2 m/min, and the production speed of the non-woven fabric is 100 m/min. And the production cost is low. In addition, nonwovens also have high strength, air permeability, water absorption, durability, light weight, flame retardant, disposable and other characteristics. Due to all these remarkable features, the textile industry is moving towards non-woven fabrics.

04 The status of domestic non-woven fabrics

Nonwovens are often considered the future of the textile industry due to their increasing global demand and versatility. At present, there is still a gap between our domestic non-woven technology or technology and international advanced technology, but we have a broad market. With the upgrading of consumer demand, we will accelerate the development of domestic non-woven technology or technology. At present, the domestic research and development of non-woven fabrics is mainly concentrated in the fields of new raw materials, new equipment development, functional finishing technology, and online composite technology.