Effects of panel parameters and heat setting temperature on thermal shrinkage of heat cured polyester plain knitted fabric panels

Abstract

Synthetic polymer fabrics are normally heat set to improve the dimensional stability. In the recent past garment finishing processes that involve heat has increased, where already heat set synthetic materials are subjected to another heat application. Most of these processes applied on cut fabric panels as the placement of the application such as a print or a heat seal label is well defined with tight tolerances. This heat application leads to shrink and reduce the size of the garment panel though these fabrics have already been heat set. Different garment panels shrink in different amounts, hence adding a fixed a heat shrinkage allowance will not ensure the dimensions of the finished garment. This research is to investigate the effect of cut panel dimensions and the previous heat set temperature on the shrinkage at the post heat applications on garment panels. 100% polyester plain knitted fabrics were heat set and the thermal shrinkage of fabric panels were measured after post heat application. The results revealed that the heat setting temperature and panel dimensions are significant predictors of wale-wise thermal shrinkage while the effect of cut panel layout is negligible.