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Abstract

There is a lot of research done in the field of heating of sewing needle at high-speed sewing, most of these theoretical models only calculate the gain of heat and neglect the heat losses by convection. In this research the total heat balance will be theoretically analysed considering the heat gain by needle by friction of thread and fabric to the needle at high speed, whereas the maximum hot loss is considered by conduction, convection and radiation. In which two different approach of parallel flow and cross flow around the hot needle is considered to predict more precise sewing needle temperature. The results are further compared with other theoretical models and experimental results. This is the one of the few models in which the heat of convection is considered as the cooling of sewing of needle.

Keywords

friction heating sewing needle needle temperature needle temperature measurement prediction of needle temperature

Introduction

The increase in demand of textile made products including seat covers, apparel, upholstery or even technical textiles; the necessity of highly productive sewing process cannot be neglected. It’s not only higher production but improvement of the productivity has made the industrial and academia stake holders to put immense stress on the improvement of sewing process. The history of sewing machine is mainly from 1790¹ when Saint T. invented the first practical model of sewing machine. It was the era when demand of sewn product was high and it wasn’t possible to fulfil this by manual work. The sewing machines went through many improvements in the last 100 years, now the latest industrial machines are very reliable and can stitch more than 80 stitches a second,² but this higher speed of machine brings problems to the final product. There are multiple factors why these machines are forced to run at half of its possible speed. The technical issue of needle heating at higher speeds of sewing is one the major problem faces by textile companies, it brings damages like melted spots on the textile fabric, poor seam strength, broken thread and loss of productivity.^3–5 The reason of this heating with higher speeds of sewing is also directly connected to ambient conditions and parameters of sewing process.

In last decade the growth of the sewing process improvement is quite significant. With lots of products produced by sewing every day, any small improvement in the process can bring great advantage for researchers and industrial partners. In sewing process, the friction between textile products like thread and fabric with the needle and machine parts is considered to be the main factor causing weaker seam.⁶ The functional performance of the seam, productivity loss due to thread breakage and the aesthetic looks of the sewn products are all important especially for the companies producing technical garments. It is necessary to deeply understand the causes and possible improvement to the sewing process.

The increase of the automatic and semi-automatic sewing machines required more closely controlled parameters of sewing, as higher speeds can be easily when human factor is removed and machines can self-stitch a garment. The sewing industries still involves a lot of labour but this might change soon in next decade with growth of the semi-automatic sewing machines^7,8 like sewing of jeans pockets etc. Currently basic problems like breakage of thread or identifiable faults can be detected by the workers⁹ but weaker seam strength and melted sewing threads causes significant loss of performance but are not easy to detect during sewing process.^9,10 It is important to know before the stitching the maximum limits of speeds and others parameters of sewing to obtain the strongest bobbin thread with full functional seam.

The research work includes the technological aspects of high seam quality by industrial lockstitch machine will be discussed considering the process faults, common developments used at the industry and overall improvement of the classic and technical clothing.

The variety of sewing machine in the apparel sector is quite huge, each with its own specific advantage. Most of the sewing machines are either categorized according to the type of usage or type of stitch formed. All these machines somehow have the similar working drive but differ in the number of thread and type of stitch formed.¹¹ The focus of the research will be majorly on the industrial lock stitch machine due to its versatile usage and particularly usage in the field of technical and functional garments, where the process parameters are of utmost importance.

Lock stitch machine are very versatile machine with stronger seam and often used where high strength is required. Whereas the chain stitch is used for aesthetic and also where the extension of seams is required like the swimwear or underwear seams. Lock stitch is made by looping of needle thread and other from the bobbin.¹² The needle thread comes from the spool/bobbin and travels via all the guides/hooks and the tension tools and lastly through the eye of needle. While the thread from shuttle comes under the sewing machine and make loops with the upper thread. To make one stitch, the needle penetrates in the fabric and needle thread catches the bobbin thread to make the seam in the middle of the fabric. Then the feed-dogs (part of sewing machine which runs under the fabric) moves the fabrics in the direction of the stitch length, these cycles repeated for each stitch.¹³

The main objective of the research is to solve theoretical equation of needle heating and cooling during sewing process. There is a lot of research already done in this field but they lack majorly the impact of sewing thread and textile fabric. Whereas the all these models^14–19 avoid the heat loss by convection or oversimplify it to achieve their results. In this research the role of thread, fabric and its properties are included in the overall heat gain of the needle and comprehensive two approaches of parallel and cross flow are included to see the impact of needle cooling by heat of convection. This is unique way to solve the overall heat mechanism of sewing needle at high speed of sewing.

Theoretical model

Heating mechanism of sewing needle

The needle penetrates and withdraw from the fabric at a very high speed, with machine parameters, ambient conditions and the overall frictional force between needle, thread the fabric makes the measurement process extremely complicated. The temperature rises quickly within first 4–6 s heating of the needle is a complicated process. During each repeated stitch, the needle temperature increases with speed and friction with the thread but varies minor during the time of fabric insertion¹⁴

The heating of needle is majorly because the friction between needle, thread and the fabric. But there are various school of thoughts and many researchers believe fabric to be source of heating where as other think it as a source of cooling considering low thermal conductivity of textile material and having the temperature as the room condition.^19–21 has published numerous articles on this issue.

If heat is generated by the friction force between the needle, thread and the fabric then this generated heat flux largely depends on the frictional coefficient and thermal conductivity of all rubbing surfaces.

Boundary conditions

It is quite obvious that the heat source and the heat absorbers are both time dependent, which requires complex solution of transient needle heating. Having time dependent boundary condition and with irregular needle shape many researchers have simplified the problem to achieve the maximum needle temperature theoretically. In this kind of thermal system have mainly these boundary conditions.

The needle is considered as solid uniform body with homogenous heat flux attached to the holder with fixed (ambient) temperature.

The illustrative image of thermal mechanism of needle is pointed in Figure 1; most of the researchers have neglected the heating by sewing thread and also the cooling by conduction.

Figure 1.

Needle heat balance.

Heat change generated by thread and needle interaction on the surface of needle eye.

1 Heat generation by the friction of fabric on the surface length of needle.

2 Heat conduction distribution through the needle to the holder with fixed temperature.

3 Convective heat dissipation from needle surface (homogenous) to the environment.

Analytical model

There are few theoretical models existing related to the heating of sewing needle, most of them didn’t consider the thread factor in the calculations or neglected the heat loss by convection. The Finite Element models give useful information but complex meshing and computation makes them almost non practical for any industrial partners. I preferred the analytical model, as they much simpler to analyse and any further improvements can be made according to the theoretical approach. Finally, the industrial partner can utilize at the sewing floor or complex computation can be managed based on the analytic model by researchers. From all theoretical and experimental analysis, it is found that with in first few seconds of the sewing the steady state is achieved which is also very close to the peak temperature of the needle. To avoid the complication of time factor it is planned to analyse the heating and cooling of the sewing needle analytically. If the maximum possible temperature can be calculated analytically it will be relatively much easier way to find the heat transfer while heating and cooling of the needle without using complicated computation.

Let’s consider initially the temperature increase of the needle by friction of thread-needle and fabric-needle and analytically calculate the maximum needle temperature which needle can obtain. The cooling process by heat transfer by convection and radiation takes place at the same time. Normally these all four processes as shown in Figure 2 operate at the same moment. In the model the assumptions made are listed below Following Boundary conditions are set

1 The needle is considered as solid uniform body with homogenous heat flux attached to the interface between needle and holder with fixed (ambient) temperature.

2 There is constant heat generation by thread friction on the needle eye surface.

3 Constant heat flux generated by the friction of fabric on the surface length of needle.

4 Steady state one-directional heat conduction distribution through the needle to the holder with fixed temperature.

5 Heat transfer from the needle surface to the surrounding by convection with constant temperature.

Figure 2.

Heat balance of stitch cycle.

Following assumptions are considered for the analytical model.

1 Start of the sewing process the fabric, thread and the needle have same ambient temperature.

2 Needle is assumed as cylinder with homogeneous material properties.

3 The fabric, thread and needle material have fixed thermal conductivities and does not change during the process. Whereas λ_N is fixed thermal conductivity of needle, which is considerable higher in comparison to the thread thermal conductivity as λ_y and of fabric material conductivity as λ_F, and are represented by a single value for each respectively.

4 Textile materials (thread, fabric) are considered homogenous throughout length with fixed thermal properties.

5 The small size of needle with small mass and low emissivity is considered negligible for the radiation loss.

6 The peak frictional heat between to surfaces is determined by Q = f • v¹⁸ showing ‘f’ as friction force (N) and highest speed between to contact bodies is expressed as ‘v’ (m/s).

7 ‘ $γ$ ’ is Two surfaces in contact shares the frictional heat and this is explained by partition ratio (Charron’s relation)²² as

$γ = \frac{1}{1 + ξ_{N}}$ (1)

Where $ξ_{N} = \frac{b_{i}}{b_{N}}$ , ‘N’ represents the needle and i expresses the other material interaction, and ‘b’ is important factor representing the thermal absorptivity of the materials, it can be expressed as $b = \sqrt{(ρ • s • λ)}$ , in which ρ shows density of the material, s represents specific-heat of the material and $λ$ is the thermal conductivity of the material.

For this model the complex shape of the needle is considered as uniform cylinder to simplify the equations. The important part initially is to get the maximum possible needle temperature, which is mainly because of friction heat of needle-fabric and needle-sewing thread. Considering the equilibrium state in which the heat produced by friction is equal to the heat loss by conduction and convection, the heat accumulation can be neglected.

Heat gain model

Firstly, it is important to know the maximum heat generated by the needle-fabric and thread friction. Knowing the maximum heat accumulation, it will be much easier to determine the maximum temperature needle can obtain if there was no cooling (conduction, convection or radiation).²⁰

Heating of needle

Initially the heat produced by the friction between fabric and the needle surface can be expressed as

$Q_{F N} = γ_{F N} • μ_{F N} • F_{F N} • v_{F N}$ (2)

The second source of heating is the frictional heat production between needle and the thread and can be shown as

$Q_{T N} = γ_{T N} • μ_{T N} • T_{T} • c o s θ • v_{T N}$ (3)

Where, detail of symbols is listed below and the value/unit is shown in Table 1.

$γ_{T N}$ is ratio of heat distribution (needle and thread).

$γ_{F N}$ is ratio of heat distribution (needle and fabric).

$μ_{T N}$ is frictional coefficient between thread and needle.

$μ_{F N}$ is frictional coefficient between needle and fabric.

$T_{T}$ is maximum stress on thread in one complete stitch (N).

θ is the thread angle to sewing needle (\).

$v_{F N}$ is maximum needle speed in stitch cycle (m/s).

$F_{F N}$ is needle penetration force with the fabric (N).

$v_{T N}$ is maximum thread speed in stitch cycle (m/s).

The angle θ between thread and needle is shown in Figure 3.

Table 1.

List of symbol and units.

Variables	Symbol	Value	Unit
Heat absorption ratio (fabric/needle)²²	$γ_{F N}$	0.97	-
Heat absorption ratio (Yarn/needle)²²	$γ_{T N}$	0.96	-
density of sewing thread²³	$ρ$ _y	1350	kg/m³
Sewing thread specific heat²⁴	S_T	1250	J/(kg •K)
Sewing thread thermal conductivity²⁴	$λ_{T}$	0.15	W/(m •K)
Fabric density (yarn of fabric)²⁵	$ρ_{F}$	1540	kg/m³
Fabric Specific heat (yarn of fabric)²⁴	S_F	1450	J/(kg •K)
Fabric thermal conductivity²⁴	$λ$ _F	0.06	W/(m •K)
Sewing needle density²⁶	$ρ_{N}$	7850	kg/m³
Sewing needle specific heat²⁶	$C_{N}$	523	J/(kg •K)
Sewing needle thermal conductivity²⁶	$λ_{N}$	40	W/(m •K)
Needle and thread frictional coefficient (experimental value)	$μ_{T N}$	0.3	-
Needle and fabric frictional coefficient (experimental value)	$μ_{F N}$	0.45	-
Sewing thread maximum stress^27,28	$T_{T}$	1.1	N
Sewing needle maximum speed (experimental value)	$ν_{N}$	$C_{F} • ν_{M}$	m/s
Sewing revolutions (constant is used in the equation to balance the units)	$ν_{F N}$	1000–4700	r/min
Sewing thread angle to needle²⁹	$θ$	45	^°
Penetration force (normal force; experimental value)	$F_{F N}$	3.3	N
Volume of needle	V_ol	2.3 × 10⁻⁸	m³
Maximum thread velocity	$ν_{T N}$	$C_{T} • ν_{M}$	m/s
Mass of needle	m	0.00018	Kg

Figure 3.

Thread angle to the needle.

Knowing all the sources of heating, the maximum heat absorbed by the needle can be expressed as sum of frictional heat from needle-thread and needle-fabric.

$Q_{N} = Q_{F N} + Q_{T N}$ (4)

From the equation of calorimetry in a closed system,

$Q = m • C_{N} • (T_{M} - T_{i})$ (5)

Where, detail of symbols is listed below and the value/unit is shown in Table 1.

m is needle mass (kg).

$c_{N}$ is needle’s specific heat (J/kg .K).

$T_{M}$ is final temperature of needle (K).

T_i is needle’s ambient temperature (K).

From above mentioned four equations, following relation is obtained.

$\begin{matrix} m • c_{N} • (T_{M} - T_{i}) = γ_{F N} • F_{F N} • μ_{F N} • v_{F N} \\ + γ_{T N} • μ_{T N} • T_{T} • c o s θ • v_{T N} \end{matrix}$ (6)

Many variables shown in equation (6) are function of time and to obtain the closest results, the equation must be solved as complex function of time. This type of computation will make the equation time consuming and hard to be used at sewing floor. To make the simplification the maximum absolute values of the variables like $F_{F N}$ and $T_{T}$ are selected, the core objective is to find the maximum temperature needle can achieve considering steady state.

$T_{M} - T_{i} = Z • v_{M}$ (7)

Where

$Z = \frac{1}{m . c_{N}} • {γ_{F N} • F_{F N} • μ_{F N} • C_{F} + γ_{Y N} • μ_{T N} • T_{T} • \cos θ • C_{T}}$ (8)

Grouping all the known factor it can be seen from equation (7) that parameter Z can be derived as shown in equation (8).

Initially parameters of this equation can be obtained from literature and this will help to calculate the maximum needle temperature due to repeating heat from fabric and thread towards needle. With this approach it will be possible later to find out the heat losses due to convection, conduction or radiation.

The required data for the equation is listed in the Table 1.

Solving the equation brings us the maximum needle temperature that a needle can possibly achieve if parameters like frictional coefficient, thermal conductivity and normal force is known. The results sows that the needle temperature is also a linear function to the machine speed. The model can bring the maximum needle temperature and after this the equation will be further balanced to measure the losses of heat by conduction, convection and radiation as shown in the following chapter.

The Figure 4 shows the maximum attained temperature of needle by thread and fabric friction to the needle.

Figure 4.

Theoretical prediction of maximum needle heating.

Heat loss from needle

The predicted temperature is higher than the experimental results, which is obvious as the heat losses are still not measured. The heat loss can be either from conduction, convection or radiation. It is assumed that radiation will have negligible impact on the needle as the small size of needle with emissivity as low as 0.1 will not play any significant role.

Further, the convective heat transfer rate between needle and ambient air (surrounding) and conductive heat transfer through the needle to the holder should be calculated.

Convective heat transfer

The model is initially based on the maximum heat built up in the sewing needle from any source. The convective heat flow is very dominant factor and cannot be neglected. There are two major complexities for determining the heat loss by convection followed the airflow around the needle.

1 The distribution of the temperature on the needle with respect to time and turbulent non-uniform flow of air around the needle due to penetration and withdrawal process. The illustrative image of needle with flow is shows in Figure 5.

2 The thread contact with the needle is no permanent and the movement of thread through the needle eye bring flow of air specially when not fully in contact with the needle. The illustrative image of needle with flow is shows in Figure 6.

Figure 5.

Heat loss by convection with needle penetration and withdrawal.

Figure 6.

Heat loss by convection due to thread movement.

In case of sewing needle its complex as the temperature is distributed on needle with respect to time, the flow of air around is turbulent and penetration and withdrawal of the needle makes huge change in the flow direction, secondly the thread brings flow of air through the needle eye but it can have forwards direction, reverse direction and even stationary with no relative speed of thread (the time when loop of stitch is developing)

To resolve this complex issue, firstly the maximum flow around the needle at different speed of sewing is determined; it was found that there was 2–20 m/s (experimental results) flow of air around the needle for machine speed of 1000–4700 r/min. With this result it will be possible to make assumption and determine the representative value of the convective heat transfer coefficient.

According to Perry,³⁰ for vertical cylinders there is 12 W/m²•K for natural flow and for speed of 3 m/s the coefficient is nearly 170 W/m²•K.

From the literature^15,29 the ‘ $h_{C}$ ’ (Convective heat transfer coefficient) for sewing needle for speed of 1000–3000 ranges from 80 to 120 W/m²•K where the speed flow is 10–15 m/s.

The passing of air through needle eye with the thread is complex, knowing the thread moved forward, reverse and also remains constant during each cycle of the stitch. To start with convection analysis, experimental technique is used to measure the flow of air next to the needle at different speed of sewing. It was found that the penetration and the withdrawal process of the sewing makes a flow of air 2–20 m/s corresponding to 1000–4700 r/min of machine speed, it is measured using sensitive air flow measurement devices next to the needle. Knowing the speed of air, temperature of needle and the environment is possible to use the heat of convection equation.

$Q = A • h_{C} • Δ t$ (9)

Where, A is needle area of surface (m²).

$h_{C}$ is convective heat transfer coefficient (W/m²•K).

$Δ t$ is change in temperature of needle (K).

The convective coefficient $h_{C}$ is composed of factors like properties of fluid, needle geometry, velocity of fluid etc. There are two possibilities considering the air flow either parallel to flat surface or cross flow across a cylindrical body. Both possibilities will be attempted to see the overall difference in temperature.

Cross flow

For parallel flow considering the needle as a cylinder air is actually crossing it, as shown in Figure 7. For this configuration the Nusselt number for turbulent flow could be evaluated using equation³¹:

$N u = 0.59 • P r^{0.35} • R e^{0.35}$ (10)

Where Reynold’s number ‘Re’ can be calculated as below

$R e = U • d / u$ (11)

Where ‘ $U$ ’ is mean velocity of air (m/s).

$u$ is viscosity of air (m²/s).

d is the characteristic dimension (needle diameter) (m).

Figure 7.

Cross flow at the cylinder.

And Prandtl number ‘ $\Pr$ ’can be obtained from literature³² depending on the properties of air at specific temperature. So convective heat coefficient can be calculated as

$h_{c} = N u • λ / d$ (12)

where

$λ$ is heat conductivity of air (W/m •K).

$d$ is diameter of needle (m).

This is one assumption that the flow of air is crossing the needle but more realistic assumption should be that the air flow is in the direction of the needle movement, considering this assumption a needle can have parallel flow like air flowing above the flat surface.

Parallel flow

Considering the needle side as flat surface and the penetration and withdrawal process causing a flow of air parallel to the surface of the needle. The literature from Roland³³ was used to match our condition for the equation of Nusselt’s number, the illustrative image of air parallel flow on through the surface of plate is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8.

Parallel flow on flat surface.

This requires calculation using a Nusselt’s number as

$N u = 0.122 • {Re}^{0.68}$

The Reynolds number can be calculated from equation (11) using the length of flat surface as a characteristic dimension.

Both ideas of cross flow and parallel flow are calculated with the given formulae and data depending on temperature are taken from literature respectively. It is good idea to compare the results from both assumption with the experimental results.

Considering all the heat gain and later maximum loss by convection or conduction, the convective heat coefficient under cross flow or parallel flow air across needle can be calculated.

The property of air like thermal conductivity, viscosity, density and specific heat at different temperatures are taken from literature^24,26 to reach more accurate results instead of keeping a fixed average value.

Both the idea of flow of air is solved to see the convective heat coefficient and the total heat loss in terms of temperature form the hot needle. The results are shows in Table 2.

Table 2.

Heat loss due to parallel and cross flow of air.

	Parallel flow				Cross flow
Machine speed (r/min)	Nusselt number (-)	Convective heat transfer coefficient (W/m²•K)	Heat loss Q (W)	Temperature loss (°C)	Nusselt number (-)	Convective heat transfer coefficient (W/m²•K)	Heat loss Q (W)	Temperature loss (°C)
1000	6.10	58.54	0.04	4.40	4.56	131.21	0.10	9.90
1500	9.36	92.62	0.09	9.40	6.23	184.99	0.18	18.70
2000	11.78	120.60	0.15	15.30	7.42	227.88	0.28	28.90
2500	13.92	145.73	0.22	22.30	8.40	263.77	0.39	40.30
3000	16.21	169.68	0.29	30.30	9.33	292.93	0.51	52.30
3500	19.39	202.93	0.40	41.50	10.55	331.38	0.66	67.70
4000	23.28	243.67	0.54	56.10	11.97	375.91	0.84	86.50
4700	26.01	272.23	0.70	72.50	12.92	405.75	1.05	108.10

It can be seen in the Table 2, that the cross flow and the parallel flow brings small difference in the convective heat transfer coefficient and finally the total loss in terms of temperature can be measured. These results will be subtracted from the total heat gain to compare with the experimental results.

Heat loss by conduction

The second factor for heat loss is heat conduction through needle to the holder. Let’s consider a cylinder with temperature of 330°C on one side of it and the flow of heat will be towards the heat sink side (holder).

Using Fourier’s law

$q = - k • A (Δ T / Δ x)$ (13)

Where ‘k’ (W/m •K) shows thermal conductivity of needle, ‘ $A$ ’(m²) is cross-section area of needle and ‘ΔT’ (K)is difference of temperature between the needle tip (maximum temperature) and the holder, ‘ $Δ x$ ’ (m) is the distance of needle hottest part to the holder.

Even at the maximum needle temperature the loss of heat to the holder is negligible (calculated as $\dot{Q}$ = 0.12 W) this loss is negligible even at the highest temperature of needle and can also be neglected during the theoretical analysis.

Final outcome

The results were experimentally verified using the temperature measurement with inserted thermocouple³⁴ and the following thread as shown in Table 3 is used for the experiment. All other parameters are similar as used for the other experimental work.

Table 3.

Sewing thread used for the experiments.

Thread structure	Trade mark	Count (tex)	Twist (t/m)	Direction of twist (ply/single)	Frictional coefficient µ (-)
PET-PET core-spun	Saba C-35 (Amman)	80	490	Z/S	0.30

The theoretical model for sewing needle temperature including parallel flow, cross flow is calculated and the results are then matched with the (inserted thermocouple method) experimental results,³⁴ the final outcome showed to be very promising and can be used to predict needle temperature with decent accuracy.

From Figure 9, the theoretical and experimental results of the needle temperature can be compared, this brings us to our final conclusion that there is linear rise of sewing needle temperature with respect to temperature and secondly the absolute values of the theoretical analysis using cross flow hypothesis are closer to the experimental results. This analytical technique does not require excessive computation and can be very beneficial for the industrial partners to predict the needle temperature at the sewing floor. The results were also compared with the other models available; the data was taken from the published results of the previous authors,^26,29,33. the previous models are only made for lower speeds of sewing and present model shows much better results as compared to previously published model. All previous models other than the finite element approach completed neglected the heat loss by convection, majorly due to complexity of the needle heating process. Table 4 shows the comparison of results from different researcher, similar raw material and testing condition is used for prediction of the sewing needle temperature.

Figure 9.

Theoretical and experimental needle temperature comparison.

Table 4.

Needle temperature comparison of new model results previous models.

Machine speed (r/min)	Experimental results³⁴ (°C)	Sliding contact model¹⁵ (°C)	Lumped variable model²⁹ (°C)	FEA¹⁸ (°C)	Present theoretical model (°C)
500	77(±2.3)	109	110	87	72
1000	117(±3.7)	145	140	127	102
2000	170(±4.4)	197	195	180	161
3000	241(±3.9)	X	X	X	252
4000	270(±4.7)	X	X	X	291

Conclusions

Friction between needle and sewing thread is one of the major sources of needle heating. In general, the needle heating is a complicated heat transfer problem. The results from the previous authors were only at lower speed of sewing and majority of these researchers never used the sewing thread during the theoretical analysis. Every model has multiple assumptions and can bring deviation from the final results. The results from the presented model are quite precise and it was also visible in the fabric that machine speed of 4000 r/min or higher there were melted spots on it. Which is clear prediction that the needle temperature is surely above 260°C to cause the melting of the Polyester thread. The model can be used for the denim industry which faces biggest issue of thread melting and breakage and causes delay in the production. It is possible to optimize the sewing process to achieve maximum strength of seam without causing damages to the thread or burnt spots on the fabric.

The analytical approach is novel and unique, as in the previous studies the needle temperature by finite element analysis is attempted, which provides useful information but the complexity of the friction heat and time factor makes it almost impossible to be used at any industrial floor. The analytical model on the other hand provides more simplified steps of measurement and can be tested, improved or used by future researchers or industrial partners.

The presented analytical model does not require extensive computation. As a result, it can be used to estimate the needle temperature at sewing floor, provided certain material and process parameters as shown in table are available, and provide valuable information for optimizing the industrial sewing operation.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Mazari Adnan

Novosad Jan

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

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