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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 #236301

Title: A Study On The Hidden Portion Of The Fiber Beard In Cotton Lenght Measurements.

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

Submitted to: National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/5/2009
Publication Date: 4/23/2009
Citation: Cui, X., Cai, Y., Rodgers III, J.E., Thibodeaux, D.P., Martin, V., Watson, M. 2009. A Study On The Hidden Portion Of The Fiber Beard In Cotton Lenght Measurements. Proceeding of the National Cotton Council Beltwide Cotton Conference. 1226 CD-ROM.

Interpretive Summary: The beard method is used to make a fiber beard, and then this beard is scanned to generate a fibrogram, which is a curve describing the beard mass at different length. Cotton fiber length parameters, such as Mean Length and Upper Half Mean Length, can be derived from the fibrogram. The method used for making such a beard impacts the resulted fibrogram. Therefore could influence the derived length parameters. One aspect regarding the beard method is that, when making a beard, a portion of the sampled fibers is held in the instrument and not tested. Today HVI is widely used in the industry because it is fast and accurate. In order to fully utilize the potential of HVI, we are exploring ways to obtain the entire fiber length distribution from the beard method. Therefore it is very important to understand the properties of the hidden fiber portion and to reveal the impacts on fiber length measurements. In this paper, we report a research studying the hidden fibers with experimental data and numerical simulations, analyze the characteristics of these hidden fibers, and discuss the influences from these characteristics. We are currently studying the effects of the hidden portion on the accuracy of length distributions and Short Fiber Content measurement.

Technical Abstract: The beard method is used to make a fiber beard, and then this beard is scanned to generate a fibrogram. Cotton fiber length parameters can be derived from the fibrogram. The method used for making such a beard impacts the resulted fibrogram, hence could influence the derived length parameters. When making a beard, a portion of the sampled fibers is held in the instrument and not tested. We call this portion the hidden portion. Beard method is the method used by the High Volume Instrument (HVI) for measuring fiber length parameters. Today HVI is widely used in the industry because it is fast and accurate. In order to fully utilize the potential of HVI, we are exploring ways to obtain the entire fiber length distribution from the beard method. Therefore it is very important to understand the properties of the hidden fiber portion and to reveal the impacts on fiber length measurements. We conducted the research on the properties of the hidden portion, and the projecting portion that is actually scanned by the instrument. We found that the assumption in the original fibrogram theory that the undetectable hidden fiber portion was negligible was not accurate. We discussed the relationship between the hidden portion and original fibers’ mean length. We proved that the projecting portion has sufficient information for measuring Mean Length and Upper Half Mean Length. We are currently studying the effects of the hidden portion on the accuracy of length distributions and Short Fiber Content measurement.