Kinds of Fibers

The textile industry uses many different kinds of fibers as its raw materials. Some of these fibers were known and used in the earlier years of civilization, as well as in modern times. Other fibers have acquired varied degrees of importance in recent years. The factors influ8enceing the development and utilization of all these fibers include their ability to be spun, their availability in sufficient quantity, the cost or economy of production, and the desire ability of their properties to consumers.

As a result of the development of new fibers, difficulties arose in the textile industry in terms of nomenclature, classification, and identification. The confusion was compounded by the trend of manufacturers to identify each of their fibers with a different trademark. Consumers became confused by these names and found it difficult and sometimes impossible to identify the fiber content of the products they saw in the stores. Often they did not know whether an identifying name represented a particular kind of fiber or a trademark for some kind of newly created fiber. Subsequently, the United States Congress enacted the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act., which became effective on March 3, 1960. The Act requires that the labels of all textile products must show the fiber contents for amounts above 5 percent, both by fiber name and generic (or family) name, and that all fibers must be listed in descending order of their predominance, with the amount of each fiber indicated in percent by weight of the total fiber content. (The label must also indicate the name or registered number of the person or company marketing or retailing the product and, if the product is imported, the name of the country where it was manufactured.) to standardize this identification procedure, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) assigned generic groups of manufactured fibers according to chemical composition.

This arrangement has brought about some standardization, clarification, and easier identification of fibers. For the reader’s further convenience, the natural and the manufactured, or manmade, fibers are identified in Table-1-1 by classifying them according to type, name, and source or composition. A general description of each type is provided below. For illustrations of these fibers, the reader is referred to the identifying microphotographs in Chapter 33.

Natural fibers that occur in nature can be classified as vegetable, animal, and mineral. Vegetable fibers, found in the cell walls of plants, are cellulosic in composition. Animal fibers, produced by animals or insects, are protein in composition. The mineral fiber, asbestos, is minded from certain types of rock.

Manmade fibers are derived from various sources. For instance, the natural material of cellulose has been taken from cotton linters and wood pulp, processed chemically, and changed in form and several other characteristics into fibers of various lengths. These are classified as manmade cellulosic fibers.

Noncellulosic polymer fibers are another group of manmade fibers. These synthetics have been and are still being created by research chemists as companies strive to imitate properties of other fibers, to develop other characteristics, or to combine certain properties. These fibers are synthesized by combining carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and other simple chemical elements into large, complex molecular combinations or structures called polymers. Chemists, in fact, discover new chemical compositions and invent new substances that they form into fibers having certain desired characteristics. 

The protein from such products as corn and milk has been processed chemically and converted into manmade protein fibers. However, they have not been commercially successful.

Manmade fibers created from other sources are mineral fibers, metallic fibers, and rubber fibers. Mineral fibers, such as glass fibers are produced by combining silica sand, limestone, and certain other minerals.  Metallic fibers are produced by mining and refining such metals as aluminum, silver, and gold. Rubber fibers are made from the sap tapped from the rubber tree.