NIT Jalandhar develops universal abrasion tester for textile

The Textile Engineering Department of Dr B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology (NID), Jalandhar (Punjab), has developed a new universal abrasion tester for testing all types of flexible materials such as textile fabrics, leather, plastic etc under dry, semi-wet, and wet conditions.

Abrasion tester can abrade the flat specimen in uni-directional also in multi-directional (Lissajous) pattern in the same machine through the simple plug-in device. This is important for an anisotropic material for analysing material weakness along different direction. Presently, no such instrument is available worldwide which can work under flexible operating conditions and the range of operating parameters can be varied widely. This will open up new vista for research and development of materials. This instrument is very useful for engineering of textiles and other flexible material, wherever durability and life of the materials are important during their uses and applications.

It has secured clamping for varieties of fabrics with mass range (20 gsm – 1000 GSM) as well as composite, leather and plastics with polyurethane foam backing kept below abrader. Abrasion can be performed under varied loads from 3 kPa up to 21 kPa in steps of 3 kPa. Range of temperature of liquid (for elevated temperature model): ambient 95°C. Abrasion in wet conditions is possible in the machine with different liquids at varying temperatures. Compatible chamber to abrade the textile materials under various additives such as chemicals, detergents, mild alkalis, mild acids, etc. during wet abrasion. In the case of semi-wet abrasion, the material can be pre-wetted to a limited extent by spray nozzle before abrasion. Test fabric dimensions: working area of fabric of 200 mm diameter with suitable template. This will provide ease of tensile testing of material after abrasion.