Distribution of internal flaws in acrylic fibers

Optical microscopy has been used to illustrate various types of discontinuities, or flaws found within acrylic polymer fibers and to determine the distribution of such internal flaws along the length of the fiber. Flaws are comprised of particulate inclusions and voids. The internal flaw distributions approximate a Poisson type for point flaws, but significant variation is found in mean flaw concentrations from 0.03 to 2.3 flaws/mm. Both flaw concentration and flaw‐free length distributions have been used to predict, for random selection of test lengths, the probability of avoiding a flaw with respect to gauge length ( P versus L g plots).