Abstract

Comfort and durability are important to consumer. Existing literature does not report much on knitted fabrics except for dimensional stability. Knits are reported to lessen fitting problem due to their ability to stretch more than woven fabrics [1]. Some scholars reported that compact and ring-spun yarns perform differently for bursting strength [2,3]. However, none of the reviewed work compared bursting strength for different types of knit fabrics. Extension is negatively associated with strength. Additionally, ASTM D6797-2015 is newly introduced test. Its use and outcome are not published in the existing literature. Therefore, the reported study compared bursting strength and extension of seventeen knitted fabrics (jersey, interlock and pique) in several fiber contents. Because of lack of research in the area of inquiry, thirteen hypotheses were developed for jersey, interlock and pique knits. Oneway Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), correlation coefficient, regression analysis and t-tests were executed using IBM SPSS program to test the hypotheses at 95% confidence level. Eleven of the thirteen hypotheses were rejected. Several significant differences were found by knit structure and fiber content. The study provided empirical data on bursting strength and extension for knitted fabrics and filled void using the newest standard. The findings for which some previous research was available showed different results. Several possibilities for extending this exploratory research are identified.

Keywords: Bursting strength; Extension; Fabric count; Fabric thickness; Fabric weight; Knits; Knit types