Fibre structure linen

There is a linen cloth decorated with silk flowers on the kitchen table. It is old, and was embroidered by J s mother, 60 years ago. That was on the island of Tasmania, where the family had got marooned at the begiiming of the second world-war. The mother got the silk by telling the shopkeeper that she was alone with two young children, and that her husband had disappeared in the fighting on Java. There was not much silk in Tasmania during the war. Under the microscope you see the double structure of the textile the yarns with a diameter of about 200 am, which are twined from fibres of about 10 am. It is this double structure that provides small pores that allow textile to adsorb moisture and other things. 

Deterioration of each of the fibres various components will affect the mechanical performance, but to different extents and through different mechanisms. Breakdown of the intercellular glue will obviously facilitate slippage of the ultimates, and this is often a particular problem for archaeological linen. Here though, we have chosen to focus mainly on the deterioration of the structural cellulose filler, which may be the more pertinent to the weakened condition of the Victory sailcloth. 

As for linen and other natural fibres, silk is sensitive to a variety of environmentally driven degradative processes, though in most cases the actual damage is caused by hydrolysis and/or oxidation. Attack on the polymer chains is generally initiated in the amorphous zones as a consequence of their more open structure and the incidence of reactive amino-acids (specifically histidine, lysine, phenylalanine, proline, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine). 

Flax and hemp straw due to the specific structure of fibre finds its application mainly through the traditional flax spinning method. Linen and hemp textiles are usually thicker than cotton, wool or chemical fibres. Traditional flax spinning technology is highly labour intensive, inefficient and uneconomical. 

Polymer composite materials which we investigated on failure occurrence are made on the basis of natural fibres, such as linen, cotton and jute. As the matrix material used epoxy resin R70 with hardener H71 often used for laminating contact while the texture is determined in advance. Jute fabric has a surface density in level 340 g- m , linen fabric 320 g-m and cotton fabric 130 g-m . For each reinforcement three components types have been prepared. Laminates structures with two, four and six layers have been prepared. 

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