Knitting of basalt filament yarn

摘要

Basalt filament yarn is a kind of inorganic fiber material made from basalt rocks and has widely been used to producentextile preforms for composite reinforcement. However, most of basalt textile preforms found on the market are madenwith woven or directionally oriented warp knitted structures. Weft-knitted preforms made of basalt filament yarns arenstill very limited due to the difficulty of loop formation. This paper presents an experimental investigation of knittingnbasalt filament yarn using a computerized flat knitting machine. The knitting effects were discussed based on the analysisnof the variations of the loop length and yarn damage with different important knitting parameters such as yarn inputntension, stitch cam setting and fabric take-down tension. The comparisons with glass filament and wool/acrylic blendednyarn under the same knitting conditions were also presented. The study has shown that the basalt filament yarns can benmore easily knitted on a flat knitting machine than glass filament due to lower yarn damage effect and larger adjustmentnscope of stitch cam setting.