摘要

A three-component model (cuticle, para/mesocortex and orthocortex) is developed to formulate a complete wool fibre in order to evaluate the significance of the three components, especially the cuticular cells, to its bending properties. The cuticle cells could contribute up to about a third of the bending rigidity when the elastic moduli of the cortex and cuticle are in a similar range. An approximately positive linear relationship is found between bending rigidity and the proportion of cuticle in the wool fibre. Increasing the cuticle volume fraction by 200%, from 0.05 to 0.15, increases the bending rigidity by about 21 to 22%. The variation of the paracortical (or orthocortical) portion in the cortex is of less significance to the bending rigidity of the fibre, accounting for about a 10 to 17% increase in bending rigidity after increasing the paracortical volume fraction by 350%.

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