Article

2014, Vol. 43(4) 593–605

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DOI: 10.1177/1528083712471696
of fiber diameters in jit.sagepub.com

melt-blown nonwovens

Xian Miao Zhang1, Rong Wu Wang1, Hai Bo Wu1 and

Bugao Xu2

Abstract
Fiber diameter and its distribution are the fundamental parameters affecting the per-
formance of melt-blown nonwoven materials. This paper proposes a new method to
measure diameters of microfiber in nonwoven based on image processing techniques.
The one-pixel-wide boundaries of potential fibers were extracted first. The real fiber
profiles were then separated from incorrect rectangles by a recognition procedure.
Finally, the fiber diameters and diameter distribution were calculated. The experimental
results show that the new method is consistent with the manual methods in measuring
the main fiber diameter and fiber diameter distribution of melt-blown nonwoven mater-
ial and has many advantages including efficiency, reproducibility, and objectivity.

Keywords
Fiber diameter, melt-blown nonwoven, image processing, fiber profiles, classification

Introduction
Microfibers refer to fibers whose linear density is in a range from 0.3 dtex to 1 dtex
(1 dtex = number of grams/10,000 m) and have advantages in softness, specific
area, and capillary wickability over other fibers [1]. As a result, products made
from microfibers, such as melt-blown nonwovens, often posses excellent perform-
ance in filtration and conservation [2], highlighting the importance of the diameter
of the microfiber.

1
Donghua University, Songjiang district, ShangHai, China
2
University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

Corresponding author:
Rong Wu Wang, Donghua University, No. 2999 North Renmin Road, Songjiang district, ShangHai 201620,
China.
Email: wrw@dhu.edu.cn

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594 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

In the melt-blown process, a thermoplastic polymer is extruded through a linear

die containing several hundred small orifices, and streams of hot air rapidly attenu-
ate the extruded polymer streams to form extremely fine filaments. These filaments
are blown by high-velocity air onto a collector screen, thus forming a fine-filtered,
self-bonded nonwoven web [3]. This web has multiple bonding points and the
microfibers are tightly entangled, making the web difficult to dismantle for fiber
diameter measurement.
Microfiber diameter measurement based on images from an optical microscope
was the subject of the previous research. Wang et al. [4] analyzed the projection
images of single fibers in a nonwoven web captured sequentially using a CCD
camera. After noise removal and fiber profile extraction, the fiber obliquity was
obtained through curve fitting, and then the diameter was determined with hori-
zontal and vertical distances. They also conducted a preliminary study on fiber
diameter distribution. Fan separated single fibers from a web image with edge
enhancement procedures and then calculated the shaded area and stroke length-
combining gray-level parameters extracted from the fiber width and orientation
angle, thereby obtaining the shadow width [5]. Wang et al. introduced a method to
capture microscopic images from thinned melt-blown nonwoven models and meth-
ods of image segmentation and skeleton extraction to calculate fiber diameters [6].
Yan and Bresee designed a procedure to segment fibers from non-fiber regions and
determined fiber diameters with the horizontal or vertical fiber width and its orien-
tation angle [7].
However, the above methods for measuring fiber diameters in nonwoven
are suitable for thin samples where fibers are well focused and not overlapped
except crossing points. Since scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs
(see Figure 1) have a large depth of field, which is useful for understanding the
surface structure of a sample [8], the current study proposes a method to measure
microfiber diameter automatically based on SEM images. In this method, object
boundaries are firstly extracted and parallel boundaries are connected into a series
of rectangles representing potential fibers. Then, these rectangles are classified into

Figure 1. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of melt-blown nonwovens.

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Zhang et al. 595

real fiber profiles and false rectangles. Fiber diameters can be measured from the
detected fiber profiles.

Methods
In the current study, potential fiber profiles are constructed by pairing line
segments (LS). Real fiber profiles and incorrect rectangles are then classified by a
recognition procedure. The concrete steps of the proposed algorithm are as follows:

Detecting boundaries
Despite high sharpness and depth of field of the SEM images, there are pixels in the
image where contrasts between targets (fibers) and the background are still not
sufficient for perfect image segmentation when a simple thresholding is applied (see
Figure 2). Therefore, a new algorithm to extract one-pixel-wide fiber boundaries
was adopted in the current study. The new algorithm consists of three major steps.
The Gaussian filter [9] was firstly used to remove image noise. The gradient oper-
ator [10] and iterative global thresholds [11] were then utilized to separate fiber
boundaries from the background (Figure 3(a)). In the end, the thinning and prun-
ing procedure was applied [12] to one-pixel-wide boundary extraction (Figure 3(b)).

Amending boundaries
Figure 4(a) is a close-up view of a rectangular area in Figure 1(a), showing that
fiber boundaries in a local region are almost straight and can be approximated by
LS (Figure 4b). As a result, potential fiber profiles can be constructed by pairing
LS. Flex points of the crossing boundaries should be deleted (point B) and the

Figure 2. Thresholding segmentation of Figure 1(a).

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596 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

Figure 3. Boundary extraction (a) Edge detection and thresholding and (b) thinning and
pruning.

Figure 4. Line segments (LS) of fiber boundaries (a) Enlarged view of a local region in
Figure 1(a). (b) LS of fiber boundaries.

segments belonging to the same fiber boundaries should be connected, e.g., points
E to F.
Figure 4(b) shows a fold line ‘‘ABC’’ extracted from two crossing fibers. The flex
point ‘‘B’’ of the fold line can be deleted as follows:

1. Connect the endpoints A and C with a straight line (line AC in Figure 5);
2. Calculate the max perpendicular distance (Max(D)) from the black fold line
to AC;
3. If Max(D)/LAC > T, delete point B. Here, LAC is the length of AC and T is a
preset threshold. T was selected to be 3 in this project based on preliminary
results.

Segments DE and FG in Figure 4(b) belong to one fiber boundary, but are
broken because of the interception with another fiber. To identify whether two

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Zhang et al. 597

Figure 5. Schematic diagram of flex point deletion.

Figure 6. Line segments of fiber boundaries (a) and a close-up view (b).

broken segments are collinear, the slopes (kDE and kFG) of the segments and the
distance (dEF) between two near endpoints must satisfy the following conditions:

1. jkDE – kFGj < T1, where T1 is a threshold for checking the similarity of the slopes.
The different LS on the same edge of fiber should have similar values of slopes.
Considering computational accuracy, the threshold value in this paper is set as
0.1. If this is passed, then check
2. jkEF – kDEj < T1 and jkEF – kFGj < T1 (kEF is the slope of EF). If this is passed,
then check
3. dEF < T2, where T2 is set to check the distance of the slopes. The different LS on
the same edge of the fibers will not be too far away. So the distance between two
near endpoints should be smaller than a certain value. In this paper, this thresh-
old value is set as 3 according our experiments.

After all the boundaries are amended, they are replaced by the straight lines (LS)
that connect the endpoints of each boundary (see Figure 6).

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598 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

The LS of potential fiber profiles are paired based on their slopes:

jk1  k2 j 5 T ð1Þ

where, k1, k2 are the slopes of two LS; T is 0.05. Then rectangles were drawn using
the paired LS as long sides. Figure 7 displays the potential fiber profiles in the
whole SEM image.

Removing incorrect rectangles

Of the paired LS, there may be LS that belong to different fibers as seen in
Figure 7(b) (rectangles 2 and 3). Rectangle 2 is incorrect because it contains two
touching fibers. In the SEM image, the fiber structure demonstrate a trend that its
grayscale moves from light to dark and then back to light across the fiber width.

Figure 7. Fiber profiles (a) and enlarged view (b).

Figure 8. Line-segment rectangle.

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Zhang et al. 599

This feature can be revealed by a grayscale histogram, and used to separate fiber
profiles from incorrect rectangles.
Figure 8 shows rectangle ‘‘ABCD’’ that is a potential fiber profile. In the rect-
angle, lines AB and CD are the fiber boundaries and lines AD and BC are edges
perpendicular to the fiber boundaries. The intensity (gray value) changes across the
fiber boundaries can be found as follows:

1. Locate each pixel on AD and BC;

2. Starting from a pixel on AD (e.g., E), locate the pixels on a line that is parallel to
AB and ends at F on BC;
3. Add the gray values of all the pixels on EF in the SEM image;
4. For each pixel on AD, a perpendicular line can be determined and the sum of
gray values of the line pixels can be obtained. After the normalization, the
traverse intensity curve can be drawn (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. Intensity curves of rectangles in Figure 7(b); (a) Rectangle 1; (b) Rectangle 2; and (c)
Rectangle 3.

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600 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

Figure 9 shows three different intensity curves of the rectangles. The curve of a
correct fiber profile should have only one downward wave (Figure 9(a) and (c)), the
curve of an incorrect rectangle often has two or more waves (Figure 9(b)).
Therefore, two characteristic parameters F1 and F2 are defined for classifying cor-
rect fiber profiles and incorrect rectangles:

As
F1 ¼ Nv , F2 ¼ ð2Þ
W

where Nv is the number of wave valley; As is area of the shaded portion; and W is
the number of pixels along the rectangle width.
F1 and F2 of the rectangles in the image can be organized in a two-dimensional
parameter space, and a probability density distribution map can therefore be
drawn by calculating the probability of point locations of rectangles in the param-
eter space [13], as shown in Figure 10 where there are eight grade probability
contours, i.e., 12.5% probability per grade.
Figure 10 shows that the real fiber profiles have fewer wave valleys (F1) and larger
shaded area ratios (F2). Inversely, incorrect rectangles have higher F1 and lower F2.
Hence, these two classes can be separated by establishing a decision boundary in the
F1 – F2 map. In the overlapping region of real fiber profiles and incorrect rectangles,

Figure 10. The probability density distribution map of F1 and F2.

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Zhang et al. 601

the decision boundary is the curve that makes the minimum probability of classifi-
cation mistake. To ensure the accuracy of the diameter testing, the decision bound-
ary has been set towards the real fiber profiles (see the separation curve in Figure 10).
Take Figure 7(a) as an example. There were 134 rectangles in the image, of which 58
were classified as real fiber profiles and 76 incorrect rectangles (Table 1). The
Accuracy rate for classifying real fiber profiles is almost 95%. Figure 11 displays
the real fiber profiles determined by the classification algorithm.

Merging fiber profiles

The fiber profiles are then merged to avoid repeated testing. The widths of profiles
are firstly calculated by the following equation:

jC2  C1 j
W ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð3Þ
A2 þ B2

where W is the width of a profile. Ax + By + C1 = 0 and Ax + By + C2 = 0 are

equations of the long boundaries of the profile.

Table 1. Classification result of rectangles.

Real fiber Incorrect

profiles rectangles

Classified 58 76
Manually counted 55 69
Accuracy rate (%) 94.83 90.79

Figure 11. Real fiber profiles.

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602 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

The merging of the profiles, which belong to the same fiber, is based on the
following conditions:

jW1  W2 j 5 T3
j1  2 j 5 T4 ð4Þ
jM  1 j 5 T4

where
W1, W2 are the widths of two profiles;
T3 is a threshold (=5) taking the local difference in fiber width into
consideration;
1, 2 are orientation angles of two profiles;
M is the orientation angle of the merged profile.
T4 is an angle threshold that is set to 0.05, considering computational accuracy.
This step repeats until no profiles need to be merged. Figure 12 exhibits the fiber
detection results of Figure 1 after the merging process.

Calculating fiber diameter distributions

The fiber diameter of a detected fiber profile is equal to the width of the rectangle.
After all the detected fibers in the image are counted, the diameter distribution
curve can be drawn from the frequency counts. The main diameter is obtained
through the ridge position of the curve.

Experiment and discussion

Eight different melt-blown materials (Table 2) were selected as the samples in the
experiment. The SEM used in our experiment is COXEM CX-100 S with resolution
of 6.0 nm. For each sample, more than 20 SEM images with 1000 magnification
were captured at different positions. More than 1500 fibers were tested by both the
proposed method and the traditional manual method.

Figure 12. Fiber detection results of Figure 1.

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Zhang et al. 603

The experimental results show that diameter distribution curves obtained from
the proposed method are in good agreements with the curves obtained from the
manual method (Table 3), as seen in Figure 13(a–h). However, the manual method
needed approximately 500 min to finish the fiber measurements in 20 images
(25 min/image), while the proposed method required only around 0.5 min (1.5 s/
image). Therefore, the proposed method greatly improves the efficiency of measur-
ing fiber diameter distributions in an SEM image while maintaining the same level
of accuracy as the manual method.

1. In average, the manual method costs about 20–30 min to test a single SEM
image, while the proposed method only needs 1.5 sec. If this efficient method
is applied, it will be able to provide a more rapid diameter test for melt-blown
nonwoven materials.
2. Fibers with larger diameter are often covered by other fibers; they are easy to be
missed. As a result, the accuracy of the diameter distribution curve will decrease.
As these fibers occur in small numbers, they have very little effect to the main
diameter of melt-blown nonwoven materials.
3. In our experiments, we use different melt-blown nonwoven with different areal
density, thickness, and porosity as samples. Because of the large depth of field of
SEM micrographs, the diameter tested by the proposed method is in good
agreement with manual method. The proposed method is suited for diameter
measurement of melt-blown nonwovens.
4. There are several thresholds in the algorithm: the threshold T in the procedure
removing the flex points, the T1 and T2 during connecting boundaries, and
another T3 and T4 in merging fiber profiles, among others. These thresholds
will influence the accuracy of the proposed algorithm. Their values in this paper
are best cited by our experiments.

Table 2. Material used as samples.

1# 2# 3# 4# 5# 6# 7# 8#

Fiber type Polypropylene PP Polyester PP PP PP PET PP

(PP) (PET)
Areal density (g/m2) 20.23 14.98 24.2 38.17 32.49 10.51 25.16 18.81
Thickness (mm) 0.271 0.121 0.181 0.359 0.224 0.087 0.187 0.136
Porosity 75.2% 83.6% 80.3% 73.1% 71.7% 89.2% 73.5% 78.9%

Table 3. R2 of the proposed and manual methods.

1# 2# 3# 4# 5# 6# 7# 8#
2
R (%) 99.31 98.92 99.27 99.01 99.43 98.84 99.03 98.72

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604 Journal of Industrial Textiles 43(4)

% % Proposed Method
(a) 20 Proposed Method (b) 20 Time:0.50 min
Time:0.51 min
18 18
Manual Method
16 Manual Method 16 Time:530 min
Time:490 min
14 14
12 12
Frequency

Frequency
10 10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 µm 0 µm
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Diameter Diameter

% Proposed Method % Proposed Method

(c) 18 (d) Time:0.51 min
Time:0.53 min 20
16
Manual Method 18 Manual Method
14 Time:560 min Time:520 min
16
12 14
Frequency

Frequency

10 12
10
8
8
6
6
4
4
2 2
0 µm 0 µm
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10
Diameter Diameter

% Proposed Method % Proposed Method

(e) 22 (f) 24 Time:0.53 min
Time:0.52 min
20 22
Manual Method Manual Method
18 20
Time:510 min Time:530 min
16 18
16
14
Frequency

Frequency

14
12
12
10
10
8
8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 µm 0 µm
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Diameter Diameter

% % Proposed Method
Proposed Method
(g) 22 Time:0.52 min
Time:0.51 min (h) 20
20 Manual Method
18
18 Manual Method Time:520 min
Time:550 min 16
16
14
14
Frequency

Frequency

12
12
10
10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 µm 0 µm
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Diameter Diameter

Figure 13. Diameter distribution curves of eight different melt-blown nonwovens.

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Zhang et al. 605

Conclusions
Fiber diameter distributions have direct impacts on the performance of melt-blown
nonwoven materials, especially on filtration and barrier efficiency. The current
study proposes a new image-analysis method for measuring the microfiber diameter
of melt-blown nonwoven materials automatically. The experiment with eight dif-
ferent melt-blown nonwovens prove that the main fiber diameters and fiber diam-
eter distributions derived from the proposed method are in high agreements with
those derived from the manual method; but the proposed method is almost 1000
times faster than the manual method.

Funding
This research was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.
61172119), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant No.
11D10121) and Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of
China (Grant No. 201168).

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