Physical and Chemical Changes of Wool Fabrics after Artificial Ageing

The exposure of wool fabrics to light, humidity and heat are inevitable, which will accelerate their ageing, as time goes on. The exact influences of these factors were not being parallel compared and studied previously, but are very important for preparing suitable storage or display environment for wool fabrics, especially for those excavated old wools in history. Hereby, wool fabrics were treated by heat ageing, hydrothermal ageing, UV ageing and UV & ozone ageing to figure out the effects of light, humidity and heat on their physical and chemical changes resulted in the degradation of wool. The performances of the wool fabrics with different treatments were investigated by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), angle contact test, attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), etc. It has been found that thermal ageing resulted in the maximum yellowness of the wool fabrics. Hydrothermal ageing was most functional in decreasing the breaking strength and crystallinity of the wool fabrics. UV lighting induced significant hydrophilicity increase on the surfaces of the wools. The addition of ozone on UV lighting did not facilitate the further ageing of wool fabrics much.