Bionic Design of a Winding Roller and Experiments for Cleaning Long Foreign Matter from Raw Cotton

Abstract

Natural cotton fibers are inevitably mixed with long foreign matter (LFM) from the planting and ginning processes, which greatly deteriorate the quality of textile products. Therefore, how to design automated equipment that can efficiently remove LFM is very important for the cotton industry supply chain. Inspired by the comb-like gill rake structure of the carp (cyprinus carpio), a structural bionic method is first proposed for the development of automatic equipment. A series of key parameters of the proposed bionic design are presented and further optimized based on the orthogonal experimental design algorithm and the designed experimental automatic equipment through a sensitivity analysis between the factors (key parameters) and response (LFM removal efficiency). The design results show that the tooth length of the winding roller is the most significant factor effecting the response. Experimental results demonstrate that the designed modular comb-like winding device has great potential for application in the industrial cotton supply chain. Moreover, the structural bionic method is an applicable and promising method to develop this equipment compared with traditional design ideas.