What are the Friction and Abrasion in Fabric Durability Testing?

Friction: friction refers to the effect of hindering the movement on the contact surface when there is a relative motion or relative movement trend between two objects in contact with each other. Friction can be divided into sliding friction and rolling friction.

Abrasion: abrasion refers to the wear and tear caused by friction during the use of the object, thus reducing the user experience of the object and shortening the service life of the object. The main manifestations of abrasion are fading, pilling, cracks, peeling, slurry, and so on.

Friction is the most common and unavoidable cause of wear and tear in textile and related industries. Study the friction properties of fabrics, leather, rubber and other materials has important reference significance for improving the abrasion resistance of articles and how to select the raw materials suitable for our needs.

Take fabric as an example, abrasion is the phenomenon of damage that when the fabric does repeated friction with other objects during use, and the abrasion is one of the main causes of fabric damage. In the simulation of the practical use process of fabrics, according to the state characteristics of the samples during friction, the abrasion modes of the fabrics can be divided into flat grinding, curved grinding, edge grinding, rolling grinding, swinging grinding, etc.

Flat grinding: Flat grinding is the reciprocating or rotating plane friction that the fabric is subjected to, such as the friction in the sleeves of clothes, the buttocks of trousers, the bottom of socks, etc. Common standards are ASTMD 4966 and ISO 12947.
Curved grinding: Curved grinding is the friction of a fabric in a bending state, such as the friction at the elbow or knee. Common standards are ASTMD 3885 and ASTMD 3886.
Edge grinding: Edge grinding refers to the abrasion in bending position when the fabric specimens with 180° twists or 90°twists, such as the friction in the collar, cuff, trousers, etc. The common standard is FZ / T 01123.
Rolling grinding: Rolling grinding is the abrasion of fabric under impact, bending, stretching and so on, such as daily washing of fabric. The common standard is AATCC 93.
Swinging grinding: Swing grinding refers to the friction between fabrics and external objects when the fabric swings, suitable for decorative fabrics, such as curtains, sofa cloth and so on. The common standard is ASTMD 4157.

How to judge the abrasion resistance of fabric? There are three main methods, that is, end point method, mass loss method, and appearance change method.

End point method: when two yarns of different directions of woven fabric are broken, when one yarn of knitted fabric is broken, when a hole that is not less than 0.5mm appears in the nonwovens, and when the whole velvet of the pile fabric is worn off, record the friction times as the abrasion resistance index.
Mass loss method: The sample was weighed as mass A before the test and as mass B after a certain number of friction times so that take the mass loss or percentage of mass loss as an index of abrasion resistance.
Appearance change method: after a certain number of friction times, observe the appearance changes, such as color change, pilling phenomenon, wear degree, the degree of appearance change as the index of abrasion resistance.

The abrasion resistant property of fabric must be tested by professional abrasion resistant instruments, so as to provide more professional guidance for technical research and production improvement. At present, the main abrasion resistant instruments are as follows:

Martindale Abrasion Tester: It provides a variety of national standards, mainly for the flat grinding and pilling phenomenon of the fabric. It provides a number of friction heads and can meet multiple tests at the same time, it is the most commonly used abrasion resistant instrument.
Oscillatory / Wyzenbeek Abrasion Tester: Mainly for swing grinding of the fabric, it is an exclusive abrasion resistant instrument for providing ASTM D 4157 standard.
Universal Wear Tester: It can test abrasion resistance of various materials such as fabric, leather, rubber and other materials through the flat grinding and curved grinding on materials.
Taber Abrasion Tester: It can test abrasion resistance of various materials such as fabric, leather, rubber and other materials through the rolling friction on materials.
AATCC Accelerotor: It mainly simulates the daily washing of fabrics and it is an exclusive abrasion resistant instrument for providing AATCC93, M & S P26 / P53, and NEXT31 standards through the flipping friction on fabrics.

Because of different ways of friction, different forms of wear and different national standards, it is not difficult to see that there are a wide variety of wear resistance instruments of textiles. It is just a brief introduction above, please contact us if you want to know more about the abrasion tester