Effect of surgical fabrics structure on wetting behaviour

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose the materials structure-wetting behaviour relationships and to show their peculiarities for some types of surgical woven fabrics and applications of liquids. Design/methodology/approach To show the effects of fabrics structure on wetting behaviour of surgical textile materials, the special structural indices in terms of yarns and filaments lateral area were used. Findings It was shown good correlation between total lateral area of filaments in unit area of woven fabrics and wetting contact angle of liquid drops on the tested samples. Probably due to different structure of woven fabrics at a level of fibres, another index, i.e. total lateral area of yarns in unit area of fabrics, is not suitable to show clear effect on wetting behaviour of the samples. The possibilities of applications of relationships for several types of textile materials and liquids were indicated. Originality/value To date there are no investigations concerning relationships between special structural properties of the surgical woven fabrics and their wetting behaviour. On a basis of the proposed approach into fabrics structure evaluation, this study developed analysis and some types of new equations for prediction of wetting contact angle of the materials.