Investigation of Flammability Parameters of Different Types of Fabrics Using Digital Image Processing Technique

Fabric flammability is one of the most important criteria for the wearer safety. The basic objective of the apparels is to provide the basic protection to environmental conditions. But the modern age garments must also define the personality of the wearer. The textiles are also used for various purposes like home furnishing and bedding, transport, civil engineering, medical and defense. So the capacity of the burning of flammability must be evaluated at the manufacturing stage. Hence, researchers have been trying to determine the flammability capacity by measuring different flammability parameters like ease of ignition, the rate and extent of flame spread, the duration of flaming, measurement of heat release and heat of combustion. These flammability parameters are to be tested as per the numerous existing standards. These existing test methods are based on the manual measurement, which leads to human error at different stages of testing. So this project aims to determine the key flammability parameters like burning time, burning rate, burning area, char length and the complete thermal profile of the burning sample by using image processing technique. The measurement has been done by developing a customized vertical flammability tester and capturing the videos of the burning samples and then processing the videos by using customized developed software in MATLAB platform. The flammability parameters have been evaluated for the 100% cotton fabrics, 100% polyester fabrics and blends of the cotton and polyester fabrics. These fabric flammability parameters are compared for safe use in apparels. It is observed that the cotton fabrics are most safe for apparels whereas the 100% polyester fabrics are most dangerous in nature.