Effects of melt spinning parameters on polypropylene hollow fiber formation
Rebecca Ruckdashel, Eunkyoung Shim
Abstract
The objective of this research was to explore the effects of processing conditions on hollow fiber spinning, specifically to look at how differences in solidification impact hollow and solid fiber structures. Polypropylene hollow fibers were melt-spun with a four-segmented arc (4C) die under the wide ranges of spinning conditions (0.25–0.83 g/min of polymer mass throughput per a fiber, 500–2000 m/min of spinning speed, and 5%–100% quench rate). Fiber structure was explored through thermal, geometric, and tensile properties. Fiber hollowness depends on all spinning parameters studied (mass throughput, spinning speed, and quench rate). Increasing the quench rate resulted in the fiber solidifications closer to the spinneret. This leads to higher hollowness but also affected fiber tensile properties. When hollow and solid fibers were compared at constant quench, the hollow fiber solidified faster than solid fiber. The crystallinity of the fibers remained similar, but the tensile modulus was higher for hollow fiber than for solid fiber.