Predicting Bursting Strength of Plain Knitted Fabrics using ANN

In this study, the effects of yarn parameters, on the bursting strength of the plain knitted fabrics were examined with the help of artificial neural networks. In order to obtain yarns having different properties such as tenacity, elongation, unevenness, the yarns were produced from six different types of cotton. In addition to cotton type, yarns were produced in four different counts having three different twist coefficients. Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to analyze the bursting strength of the plain knitted fabrics. As independent variables, yarn properties such as tenacity, elongation, unevenness, count, twists per inch together with the fabric property number of wales and courses per cm were chosen. For the determination of the best network architecture, three levels of number of neurons, number of epochs, learning rate and momentum coefficient were tried according to the orthogonal experimental design. After the best neural network for predicting the bursting strength of the plain knitted fabrics was obtained, statistical analysis of the obtained neural network was performed. Satisfactory results for the prediction of the bursting strength of the plain knitted fabrics were gained as a result of the study.