Determination of loop length, tightness factor and porosity of single jersey knitted fabric

After fabric relaxation, there is a reduction in wale and course density due to a reduction in loop length and this actually will affect the fabric properties. Then, it is useful to find a relation between loop length and courses and wales per unit length as well as the yarn thickness because wales and courses per unit length can be easily measured at any state while it is difficult to measure the loop length in the knitted fabrics. Therefore, it is required to find an equation, through which the value of loop length can be easily calculated from the measured values of courses and wales per unit length at any state after the knitting process. In this work estimated equations to calculate the knitted loop length for open to normal structure and for normal to compact structure are developed. By comparing the value of the loop length predicted from this work with the other mentioned models, it was found that the calculated values are very near to the L value of the case study; so the developed equations are acceptable. The tightness factor and the porosity of single jersey fabrics were also calculated theoretically.