Application of the Optical Fiber Diameter Analyzer for assessing cotton fiber ribbon width

Abstract Background Cotton fiber fineness is an essential trait for processing fibers into yarn. Fibers that are long, strong, and fine allow the production of high yarn counts, i.e., finer yarns. Existing methods for measuring fineness are time-consuming, tedious, and impractical to evaluate a large number of samples. For this reason, the textile industry has sought a rapid, accurate, and reliable instrument to determine fiber fineness and other fiber quality parameters. Recently, the Optical Fiber Diameter Analyzer (OFDA) was introduced for rapid and precise evaluation of the diameter of different types of fibers, i.e., wool, cotton, and synthetic fibers. In this study, the OFDA was evaluated for measuring the ribbon width of cotton fiber snippets. A set of 104 carded cotton samples covering a wide range of fiber properties were selected and tested with nine replications per sample.Results Before the ribbon width measurement, the repeatability of the OFDA diameter measurement was confirmed. Comparisons with the data (cross-sections, AFIS, and Cottonscope) obtained from previous studies on the 104 samples were used to assess the effectiveness of the proposed method. We observed that the relationship between ribbon widths from the Cottonscope and the OFDA is not very good. Still, there is a strong correlation between OFDA ribbon width and AFIS standard fineness. We hypothesize that the poor relationship between the Cottonscope and the OFDA is related to the medium in which the measurements are performed, i.e., aqueous medium for the Cottonscope and air for the OFDA.Conclusion The OFDA 4000 ribbon width measurement could be useful in a laboratory setting. The results are stable and provide measurements closely related to AFIS standard fineness, a trusted measurement within the cotton industry.