A high-wet-modulus crimped rayon fiber has been developed from a viscose system that utilizes a high-purity wood pulp, relatively low quantities of viscose modifiers, and viscose ripening controlled to allow the spinning of a highly-oriented rayon fiber with an unbalanced cross section. This results in a fiber which develops a high degree of both macro- and microcrimp. Viscose and spin-bath specifications must be rigidly observed, but spinning and fiber-relaxing conditions may be varied to adjust the development of crimp and fiber properties. This fiber performs well on conventional textile-processing equipment and can be spun into the full range of yarn counts that are normally defined by fiber denier. Resulting yarns have the high strength of the high-performance HWM rayons with the bulk and hand of cotton. Fabrics show better cover than that of similar fabrics woven from rayon control samples, and hand and dimensional stability are comparable to those of cotton. This fiber blends well with polyester and shows an advantage in cover over other rayon/polyester blends that are normally quite lean in appearance.
Spin decoherence due to a randomly fluctuating spin bath
