Cotton's ability to open and release its foreign matter in response to mechanical cleaning treatments is a crucial concern for the textile processing industries. This work is part of a series in which a comprehensive approach to cotton quality in textile processing is developed. The theme is that processing quality is expressed in terms of a trade-off between reduction in foreign matter on the one hand and accumulation of fiber damage on the other. This trade-off between cleaning and damage governs the efficiency of manufacture as well as the quality of the textile product. In order to optimize the processing, it is necessary to be able to measure and interpret this tradeoff; this requires practical methods for quantifying both cleaning and damage. Since the principal overt manifestation of processing damage to cotton is fiber breakage, it is essential to have a methodology for measuring and interpreting incremental amounts of fiber breakage. This study presents a model of fiber breakage that relates the fundamental nature of breakage processes to the observable differences between the length distribution of fibers going into and coming out of a specific processing stage, such as a single machine. This technique is demonstrated with length data derived from the Peyer TexLab instrument system.
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