Visual evaluation of the surface of tencel/cotton blend fabrics in production and cleaning processes

This study focusses on the visual evaluation of the surface of Tencel/ cotton blend fabrics throughout production and cleaning processes. The results showed that pilling increased with consecutive laundering and dry-cleaning processes. Entanglements were mostly observed during the tangling of fibrils on the laundered fabrics, while pills were formed by fibre entanglements in/on the dry-cleaned ones. More fibrils were observed on the abraded parts of fabric samples taken from the initial laundering cycles. No clear difference was observed between the broken fibre ends and surface appearance of the laundered and dry-cleaned fabrics. The crease recovery capability of the laundered fabrics appeared to be slightly below that of the finished fabric, while dry-cleaned fabrics had slightly better crease recovery properties than the laundered ones.