Indian Journal of Fibre & Textile Research Vol. 30, June 2005, pp. 215-2 17

Properties of indigenous angora hair increasing the production of in and blended yams spun using short­ India will be accelerated. Attempts have been made by various researchers to staple cotton spinning system spin rabbit hair in blends with sheep wool, viscose and fibres using woollen spinning or cotton S K Chattopadhyay", P Bhaskar & M Ahmed l 4 Central Institute for Research on Cotton Technology, Adenwala khadi spinning systems - . However, very little has Road, Mumbai 400 019. India been done to spin this hair fibre in blends with cotton and using short-staple cotton spinning system. The present N P Gupta & A K Pokharna study explores the possibilities of producing cotton­ Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute rabbit hair blended yarns by adopting commercial Avikanagar 304 50 I, India cotton spinning system working on economical Received lillie accepted 3 August production speeds. 21 2004; 2004 Hair fibres from indigenous angora rabbit were The possibilities of producing cotton and indigenous angora evaluated for fineness, bundle strength and breaking rabbit hair blended yarns by adopting commercial cotton spinning system working on economical production speeds have been elongation using standard test procedures. In addition, explored. It is observed that as the proportion of hair fibre in the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed blend increases, the yarn properties of both the single and double to observe surface characteristics of the hair fibre yarns deteriorate, mainly due to the lower fibre strength and inter­ sample as well as that of the blended yarns produced fibre cohesion of hair fibres. from it. The hair fibre was blended with DCH.32 Keywords: Blended yarn, Rabbit hair-cotton blend, Ring cotton having 2.5% span length of 33 mm, micronaire spinning, Short-staple spinning system value of 2.9 Ilglinch (0.114 tex), bundle tenacity of 7 IPC Code: Int. CI. DO IH 1102, D0203/04 26.6 gltex and uniformity ratio of 45%. Flock blending method was adopted and the proportion of Angora rabbit hair (angora rabbit wool) is a fine angora rabbit hair was varied from 10% to 50% in the specialty fibrehaving finenessbetween 10 and 15 blends. The blends were spun into 14.7 tex (40s Ne) and the average fibre length between 30 mm11 and 6011 yarn using the ring spinning system. Single yarns mm. The fibre possesses very good lustre, high bulk produced from these trials were plied on a ring and warmth. It is softer, finer and warmer than doubler to produce 30 tex (2/40s Ne) doubled yams. sheep's wool. German Angora, one of the best-known The direction of twist was S over Z with a folding angora breeds, produces 800-1000 g of wool per twist of 80% of the single yarn twist. Commercial annum. In India, the production of angora was spinning machines working with economically viable launched in the Kullu valley in early 70' s with the speeds were used in the experiments. setting up of a sub-station at Garsa by Central Sheep All the yam samples were tested for lea strength and Wool Research Institute (CSWRI). However, the and linear density on a computerized lea tester. They yield per animal in India is much lower as compared were tested for various tensile properties by using to international standards. Scientists at CSWRI are Uster tensorapid automatic tensile tester. Yarn trying to augment angora fibre production by adopting unevenness (U%) was tested on an electronic high production German Angora. Moreover, the evenness tester. appropriate technology for the utilization of angora The fibreproperties of angora rabbit hair are given rabbit wool has to be developed to provide a stable in Table 1. Compared to DCH.32 cotton, the angora market for such fibres. Then only the efforts for rabbit hair is found to be comparable in fineness and length; its bundle tenacity is however less than half. "To whom all the correspondence should be addressed. Further, it exhibits high elongation-at-break. Scanning Phone: 24127273; Fax: +91 -22-24130835; electron micrographs of the longitudinal and cross­ E-mail: [email protected] sectional surfaces of angora rabbit hair (Fig. 1) show 216 INDIAN FIBRE TEXT. RES., JUNE 2005 1. a scaly but smoother surface structure with a elongation. Yarn unevenness (U%) In singles prominent medulla while its cross-section is round to increases with the increase in hair content but oval in shape. It was less scaly as compared to sheep decreases on doubling due to the partial neutralization wool fibre. of variations present in the component single yarns During the processing of rabbit hair, the generation forming the plied strand. It is observed that with the of a high level of static charge was observed. This increase in rabbit hair content in the blend the gain in resulted in disturbance during mechanical processing the doubled yarn strength over the corresponding of the blends. The problem was solved by the single yarn strength (the strength realization factor) application of a suitable anti-static agent, the decreases. The strength realization factor is expressed proportion of which was optimized during the trials. The properties of blended yarns (both single and double) are presented in Table 2. As the proportion of angora rabbit hair content in the blend increases, the lea esp, breaking tenacity and elongation of both the single and doubled yarns decrease. This is mainly due to the higher breaking stress and lower breaking strain of cotton fibres, resulting in non-realization of full contribution from the more extensible angora rabbit hair component in the blend during the tensile loading. The breaking elongation of the doubled yarn is lower than that of the corresponding single yarn. This is because the doubling improves the strand strength with simultaneous decrease in yarn breaking

Table I-Properties of angora rabbit hair fibre Staple length, mm 32.3

Fibre diameter. (eqv. micronaire) 11.2 (3.1) CV% � 18.9 Medullation. % 100 Single fibre Tenacity, g/tex 12.8 Elongation, % 34.5 Bundle Tenacity, g/tex 9.6 Fig. I-Scanning electron micrographs showing (a) longitudinal Elongation, % 19.0 and (b) cross- sectional views of angora rabbit hair fibres

Table 2-Properties of cotton-angora rabbit hair blended yarns

Blend Lea CSP Tenacit;r. cN/tex Breaking extension, % Unevenness, U% compo- S D (D/S)*IOO S D (D/S)* 100 S D (D/S)*IOO S D (D/S)* 10 sition 0 (R:C) 10:90 3220 3688 115 13.7 25.9 189 6.2 5.5 89 12.3 8.7 74 (19.6) (7.2) (12.6) (8.1) 20:80 3164 3551 112 12.2 22.8 187 6.0 5.3 88 12.3 9.4 76 (19.1) (8.1 ) (7.6) (5.3) 30:70 2385 2590 109 ILl 19.3 174 6.1 5.0 82 12.0 9.0 75 (11.8) (7.3) (8.8) (4.2) 40:60 2180 2364 108 9.0 14.4 160 6.1 4.8 78 12.5 8.7 70 (10.7) (8.5) (8.4) (8.3) 50:50 1664 1754 105 8.7 13.1 151 5.2 4.0 77 14.0 9.4 67 (15.9) (10.1 ) ( 14.6) (8.1 ) R - Angora rabbit hair, C - Cotton. S - Single yarn, and D - Double yarn. Values in parentheses indicate CV% SHORT COMMUNICATION 217

rabbit hair content in the blend, even though the number of hair fibres in yarn cross-section increases, this is probably offset by the reduced inter-fibre cohesion between the individual strands of plied yarn. This is due to almost smooth outer surface of Angora rabbit hair fibres as shown in Fig. l(a). Scanning electron micrographs of longitudinal surface of yarn samples collected from both the single and doubled yarns are shown in Fig. 2.

Acknowledgement The authors are thankful to Shri A K Chaphekar and Shri G B Hadge for experimental assistance during the work. They are also thankful to Dr K M Paralikar for his valuable comments on the results of SEM studies and to Dr S Sreenivasan, Director, CIRCOT, for encouragement during the work.

References Fig. 2-8canning electron micrographs depicting the longitudinal 1 Bakre P S & Kulkarni P R, Indian Text J, 104 (9) (\994) 86. view of angora rabbit hair and cotton blended (a) single and (b) 2 Gupta B & Goel A, Indian Text J, 108 (3) (1998) 54. doubled yarns 3 Gupta N P, Arora R K & Patni P C. Indiall Text J, 102 (4) (1992) 66. as (D/S)* 100, where D is the doubled yarn property 4 Arora R K, Gupta N P, Patni P C & Singh U S, Indiall J Text and S, the single yam property. With the increase in Res, 8 (1983) 127.