Non-woven fabrics are made by bonding fibers together using chemical, heat, mechanical, or solvent treatments rather than weaving or knitting. There are several manufacturing processes for non-wovens including spun-bond/spun-laid, melt blown, needle punching, and spun-lace. The production process for non-wovens is smaller and less expensive than for woven fabrics, though woven fabrics are generally more durable and strong due to their fabric structure.

2. Non-woven fabrics
• Non-woven fabrics are made bonding fibers together by chemical, heat, mechanical or
solvent treatments. Both staple or short fibers and continuous long fibers are used in non-
woven materials. It is basically a sheet of fibers (staple and continuous), that have been
formed into a web, bound together by various means, other than weaving or knitting.
• The term non-woven was coined in 1942, and were first were known to be produced in the
US. The first non-woven fabrics were formed by adhesively bonding fiber webs together.

3. Manufacturing Processes for Non-Wovens
• Spun-bond/ Spun-laid process : This process includes melting of raw material, which are formed into
filaments then laid as a web, to be bound together by using heat rollers and embossing.
• Melt blown process: in this process also, polymer fibers are melted, stretched into long thin fibers,
and formed into a web, which is then bonded together. The only difference between this process
and the spun-bond process is that the melt-blown process produces non-woven fabric with low
intrinsic strength but offers much smaller size, which can be used for certain applications.
• Needle punching process: this process is mainly used for manufacturing felt. Here, fibers used are
interlocked together by using serrated needles to increase the inter-fiber friction, which gives
stronger strength in the resultant fabric.
• Spun-Lace (Hydro-entangling) process : This process uses a high pressure liquid stream to bond the
fiber web together and impart a pattern to the resulting fabric. Here, staple fibers (e.g. cotton) are
formed into a dry laid web, by carding operation. This web is then passed through a high-pressure
liquid stream, which in turn entangles the staple fibers, forming the non-woven fabric.

4. Steps in manufacturing

5. Difference between Wovens and Non-Wovens
The production process of nonwoven fabrics is much smaller than that of woven fabrics, making nonwovens
comparatively less expensive to produce.
Moreover, the fabric structure of woven fabrics provides it much more default durability and strength, as
compared to nonwoven fabrics, although the choice of raw material will also affect these properties.
Fabric Structure Of Woven, Nonwoven And Knits

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