Knitting of basalt filament yarn

Basalt filament yarn is a kind of inorganic fiber material made from basalt rocks and has widely been used to produce textile preforms for composite reinforcement. However, most of basalt textile preforms found on the market are made with woven or directionally oriented warp knitted structures. Weft-knitted preforms made of basalt filament yarns are still very limited due to the difficulty of loop formation. This paper presents an experimental investigation of knitting basalt filament yarn using a computerized flat knitting machine. The knitting effects were discussed based on the analysis of the variations of the loop length and yarn damage with different important knitting parameters such as yarn input tension, stitch cam setting and fabric take-down tension. The comparisons with glass filament and wool/acrylic blended yarn under the same knitting conditions were also presented. The study has shown that the basalt filament yarns can be more easily knitted on a flat knitting machine than glass filament due to lower yarn damage effect and larger adjustment scope of stitch cam setting.