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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Structure and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #263201

Title: Modeling the fiber length distribution from data of the beard testing method

Author
item CAI, YIYUN - Louisiana State University
item Cui, Xiaoliang
item Rodgers Iii, James
item WATSON, MIKE - Cotton, Inc
item MARTIN, VIKKI - Cotton, Inc

Submitted to: National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/20/2011
Publication Date: 4/25/2011
Citation: Cai, Y., Cui, X., Rodgers III, J.E., Watson, M., Martin, V. 2011. Modeling the fiber length distribution from data of the beard testing method. National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference. p. 1331-1335.

Interpretive Summary: This paper reports a method that can be used to improve the measurement of cotton length, which is a key property for the industry. Current rapid cotton length measurement devices utilizing the beard testing method don’t report the entire length distribution of the measured sample, but only several length parameters. Making the length distribution available will not only enable the computation of different length parameters, but more importantly, also provide complete information for evaluating the sample’s length characteristics and thus its quality. We present a method to model the sample’s entire length distribution from the rapid beard testing method. The results from the method showed good agreements with experimental results.

Technical Abstract: Current rapid length measurement instruments utilizing the beard testing method don’t report the entire length distribution of the measured sample, but only several length parameters. Making the length distribution available will not only enable the computation of different length parameters, but more importantly, also provide complete information for evaluating the sample’s length characteristics and thus its quality. We present a method that utilizes experimental data from the beard testing method to obtain the sample’s entire length distribution. A staple diagram was established based on fiber length data of the tested portion of a fiber beard, and was compared to the data obtained from AFIS measurements. A computer model was developed to utilize the staple diagrams of the tested portions to find the entire length distributions of the original samples. These distributions calculated from the beard method were compare to AFIS measured data of the original samples. The results showed good agreements.