Prognosis of Dimensional Stability and Mass per Unit Area of Single Jersey Cotton Knitted Fabric with Fuzzy Inference System

Endeavour has been made in this research work using experimental data for constructing a fuzzy inference model based on the Mamdani approach to prognosticate the shrinkage and mass per unit area of a single jersey cotton knitted fabric. To control the dimensional stability of the cotton knitted fabric in advance, an artificial intelligent system is required in the knitting industry which simulates all product and process variables and is able to give human-like decisions in advance. The most important controlling parameters of knitted fabric properties such as stitch length, yarn count and overfeed percentage in stenter were considered as input variables, and mass per unit area, lengthwise shrinkage and widthwise shrinkage as output variables. Overall, 35 experiments were conducted to construct the model, varying different parameters. The applicability of the model was validated by comparing the results from 15 newly conducted experiments. The coefficient of determination of predicted and actual data for mass per unit area, lengthwise shrinkage and widthwise shrinkage were 0.97, 0.99 and 0.99, respectively which validates the model relatively effectively for an industrial application. The proposed model can assist a fabric manufacturer by taking a decision in selecting knitting and finishing parameters prior to producing the fabric. Moreover, it can reduce the time and energy required, and waste produced in the process by skipping the sample development step before bulk production.