Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Threshold — where it appears

The value of a parameter at which a structure's behaviour changes in kind, such as the fibre density at which a random web first holds together. Below it a structure has no coherence at all and above it the coherence grows quickly, so the behaviour changes in kind rather than in degree.

Named by 2 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

A web at 6 fibre lengths squared per unit area. Straight fibres dropped at random positions and random angles. The largest connected group is drawn solid; everything not joined to it is drawn faintly. Whether that group reaches both edges is what decides whether this is a sheet or a heap.

Nonwovens, and what holds them together instead

A web of fibres laid down at random has no repeat, so the exact test for whether a fabric holds together has nothing to work on. What replaces it is a threshold, and the threshold is sharp.

cloth · Integrity A filter cloth has two jobs. Opening size against sett for a woven filter cloth, with the two limits that specify one: the soil is retained below the retention line, and the water passes above the open-area floor. They pull opposite ways, so the answer is an interval in the sett — and for a fine enough soil there is no interval at all.

A filter cloth has two jobs

Hold the soil back and pass the water. The first wants a close sett and the second wants an open one, so a filter cloth is not a fabric but an interval — one that is sometimes a single sett wide, and for a fine enough soil is empty. The empty case is the useful one, because it says the answer is not a woven cloth at all.

applied · Openings

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

NonwovenPercolationCloth integrityCoverFibre networkOpening sizeRetentionSettSpecification

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