Abstract
The purpose of this study is to prepare the hardness of polyester(PET) fabric by thermal bonding with low melting component of bicomponent fiber and to describe the change of physical properties of thermal bonded PET fabrics. The PET fabrics were prepared with regular PET fiber as warp and bicomponent fiber as weft. The bicomponent fiber of sheath-core type were composed with a regular PET core and low melting PET sheath. The thermal bonding of PET fabric was carried out in pin tenter from 120 to $195^{\circ}C$ temperature range for 60 seconds. In this study, we investigated the physical properties and melting behavior of PET fiber and the effect of the temperature of the pin tenter on the thermal bonding, mechanical properties. Melting peak of warp showed the thermal behavior of general PET fiber. However, melting peak of weft fiber(bicomponent fiber) showed the double melting peak. The thermal bonding of the PET fabric formed at about temperature of lower melting peak. The optimum thermal bonding conditions for PET fabrics was applied at $190{\sim}195^{\circ}C$ for 60seconds by pin tenter. On the other hand, the tensile strength of the PET fabric decreased with an increasing temperature of thermal bonding.
