Creating novel tissue: understanding the potential of embossing

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The vision of this proposal is to develop a long term collaborative research and development project between The University of British Columbia (UBC) and Kruger Products LP (KPLP) to enhance the market share of their kitchen towel products. This proposal represents the initial work. The goal of the work is to develop an understanding of the relationship between surface topography, i.e. the embossing pattern to the rate of absorbency. Our approach in this initial work is to employ state-of-the-art visualization tools, i.e. optical coherence tomography and computed x-ray tomography to characterize the surface topography, 3D architecture of the fibres and the flow field during absorption. Over the last number of years, UBC has developed unique models and experimental facilities to understand the fluid mechanics and transport phenomena of papermaking fibre suspensions, papermaking processes, and paper products. There is an opportunity to utilize this expertise to understand the interfacial flow during imbibition in tissue and towel. In this initial study, the work will be primarily experimental in which we develop the protocols for the key visualization tools. The work will be conducted over a 2 year period by a MASc student and three undergraduate students from either Chemical of Mechanical Engineering at UBC. Future studies may include aspects of the sheet, i.e. fibre orientation or the effect of chemical additives, and numerical simulation of the imbibition process.