In the recent years, elastic textiles have found their individual applications in textile industries due to their desirable wear comfort and extendibility properties. Among the variety of fabric structures, woven fabrics exhibit almost the lowest elastic properties because of the yarns entanglement within the structure. In order to increase these fabrics’ elastic properties, elastan yarns are now widely used during the weaving operation. Although the application of elastic yarns in woven structures are growth rapidly, but there are limited literatures about the properties of these structures as well as the investigation into the effects of fiber-yarn parameters on fabric’s elasticity. In this work, optimization of different parameters affecting woven fabrics’ elasticity including the variety of weave pattern parameters, the extendibility amount of weft yarns and also the weft density was aimed. Achieving the better condition of air-jet weaving machine considering the nozzle air pressure and the time of shell closed, is of the secondary approach through this research. For these reasons, different elastic fabrics were produced on air-jet weaving machine and the effects of desired parameters with their defined variation levels on some of the fabric properties such as pilling, wrinkling and handles, were investigated. According to the number of selected variables and their variation levels, Taguchi orthogonal array L18 was designed using Minitab14 software. In order to perform the pilling test, Martindle method was employed. In this research, the recovery angle of fabric sample after the load removal was considered as an important key for investigating the wrinkle-ability of produced woven samples. During the handle tests, the prepared samples were pulled out through a specified hole created on a designed apparatus using the Zwick tensile strength tester. The data obtained from each of the experimental procedures, were then inserted into the statistical software corresponding to the designed points of Taguchi L18 orthogonal array. The results of statistical analysis revealed that the effect of weave pattern on all three response factors (pilling, wrinkling and handle) was significant. According to the results and ANOVA tables, it was concluded that among the variety of affecting factor selected in this work, weave pattern and weft density have relatively more significant effects on pilling. Weft density increment leads to increasing the friction between yarns and fibers which in turn leads to higher bending rigidity and corrosion resistance. In this case, the fibers could not be pulled out freely from the fabric structure and hence the number of pills formed on fabric surface would be reduced. For two other response factors only the weave pattern parameter has significant effect. The results showed that in structures containing longer float (such as twill 2/2), the recovery time is more than the plain weave structures. Since the Taguchi method is able to optimize the quality characteristics only one by one, in this research the Gray Taguchi method was used to optimize the three responses simultaneously. Keywords: Elastic woven fabric, optimization, Grey-Taguchi method, physical properties
