Tensile Properties of Australian Soft Rolling Skin Wool and Conventional Merino Wool

Tensile properties are important to wool fiber because of their direct effect on the mechanical properties of wool yarns and fabrics. Many studies have been conducted to understand these fiber properties of conventional merino (CM) wool, while those of Australian Soft Rolling Skin (SRS) wool are not yet clear. In this work, SRS wool was compared with CM wool to find out the difference in these two types of wool and explore the underlying reasons for this difference. Experimental results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference in the breaking strength between SRS and CM wool, while the average breaking elongation is slightly higher for SRS wool (37%) than CM wool (34%). SRS wool (2.38 GPa) has a lower modulus than CM wool (2.53 GPa). The lower coefficient of variation of mean fiber diameter (MFD) along fiber length (fiber irregularity) is likely responsible for the higher breaking elongation for SRS wool. These findings add new knowledge to the literature on SRS wool and may have implications for the processing performance of SRS wool.