Differential Solubility of Acrylic Fibres as a Function of Stabilisation Process Variables

Acrylic tow, partially relaxed during the first stage of a conventional manufacturing process, was fully relaxed, or stabilised, in steaming equipment under different conditions of time and temperature based on a central rotatable design of experiments. The shrinkage of the samples thus obtained was measured and differential solubility curves in a mixture of dimethylformamide and water were obtained. From these results simple functional relationships between shrinkage and solubility on the one hand, and the process variables, temperature and time have been obtained