Textile Raw Materials/ TRM / Types of Textile Fibers

 Textile Raw Materials/ TRM / Types of Textile Fibers

Raw material plays an important role in any industry.  In textiles, Fibers are the basic raw material which later become end product that is Garment

Introduction to Fibers

Word Fiber originated from the Latin word Fibra. Fibers are the small heir like tissues, obtained from animals, plants, or other sources which are small in length. Fibers can be natural or manmade.

Textile fiber classification

Fibers are classified into two main categories,

·         Natural Fibers

·         Man-Made Fibers

Natural Fibers

Natural Fibers are the fibers taken from organic sources like Animals, and Plants

Natural fibers are of three types.

·         Vegetable origin

·         Mineral origin

·         Animal origin

Vegetable Origin

Vegetable Fibers composed of cellulose, which is made up of sugar and starch. Fibers in form of bundles are held together with the help of natural resins and gums that are present in different parts of plants like leaves, stem, etc. Vegetable fibers can be divided into the following categories.

·         Stem Fibers- also known as bast fibers and taken from the inner side of the bark

·         Leaves Fibers-extracted from leaves-present in lengthwise

·         Fruits and seeds fibers-Comprises of the hairs from seeds and flosses

Examples of vegetable fibers:

Roselle, Cotton, Hemp, Jute, Flax, Abaca, Piña, Ramie, Sisal, Bagasse, and Banana.

Animal origin

7% of the total textile fibers consist of animal fibers. Despite their limited production, they have a vital role in textiles.

Major Animal fibers are as follow:

Wool Fibers and hair fibers,

Fibers extracted from animals having fur, these fibers are widely used as textile fibers. Wool fibers are mainly known for sheep extracted. All the hair and wool fibers are formed of keratin so their chemical structure is related, but they exhibit different physical characteristics such as length, shapes, and fineness.

Silk Fibers

Fiber took from the cocoon of the silkworm. The production of silk in all the textile fibers is very low i.e. 0.25% of the total textile fibers. Despite this fact, it is a very important textile fiber and it is expensive when compared with other textile fibers.

Mineral fibers

The natural fiber that falls in the category of minerals is asbestos. It is a set of silicate minerals that are present naturally. It is one of the strongest fibers that are found naturally. Asbestos is used as fiber since ancient times

 

Man-Made Fibers

Natural fibers cannot fulfill the demand of world textiles, that’s why using advance technology human has made fibers. We can produce long-chain molecules from very simpler chemicals. By using this technique, we have learned to produce polyester and nylon.

Types of Man-Made Fibers

·         Regenerated Fibers

·         Synthetic fibers

Regenerated Fibers

Regenerated Fibers are also known as Natural polymer fibers, in which fiber-forming substance is taken from a natural source. Regenerated fibers are sub-categorized as follow:

·         Cellulose fibers

·         Cellulose ester fibers

·         Protein fibers

·         Miscellaneous natural polymer fibers

 

 

 

 

Synthetic Fibers

The synthetic fibers are sub-categorized according to their chemical structure. Some of the commercially important synthetic fibers are as followed;

·         Polyesters

·         Polyamides

·         Polyvinyl

·         Polyurethanes

Polyolefin