Effect of Seam Stabilizing Tapes on the Recovery Properties of Sewn Fabrics

Maintaining and improving the garment qualityare the important topics in the textile and apparel industry.The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of sometextile tapes on elastic properties as well as dynamic recoveryof the seams and enhance the shape stability. Three sampleswere prepared, namely weft knitted sewn fabrics without anystabilizing tape, and weft knitted sewn fabrics stabilized withbias woven fabric, and with stretch ribbons. The results showthat hysteresis area of the seam tensile curves decreased byincreasing the loading cycles, and dynamic work recoverystabilized after the third cycle. The tensile stress of all sewnsamples in the course direction is significantly less than thestress value in the wale direction. It is found that the seamsstabilized with stretch ribbons have the highest dynamicwork recovery (~40-70%). Also, when the seam position andthe loading direction aligned, the dynamic work recovery ofthe stabilized samples increased. The recovery behavior ofthe stabilized sewn fabrics was also simulated by mechanicalmodels consisting of spring and dashpot elements. The threeelementmodel, consisting of the Maxwell body paralleledwith a non-linear spring, properly estimated the force–straincurves of the stabilized sewn fabrics under cyclic loading.