CRIMPED CONJUGATE FIBER, METHOD FOR MANUFACTURING THE SAME AND NONWOVEN FABRIC USING THE SAME

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain a fiber and a nonwoven fabric having soft feeling, excellent both in initial bulkiness-recovering property and long term bulkiness-recovering property, and especially suitable for a usage of frequent loading. SOLUTION: A crimped conjugate fiber is produced as follows: a polymer material consisting of the first component (1) containing a polytrimethylene terephthalate resin and the second component (2) containing a polyolefin resin is subjected to melt spinning using an eccentric core-sheath-type conjugate nozzle and a drawing process; sawtooth-like crimps are imparted to the obtained yarn; and the yarn is subjected to an annealing treatment to obtain the crimped conjugate fiber. The crimped conjugate fiber exhibits wavy-line crimps and/or spiral-line crimps at a temperature of Tm-3 deg.C when the melting point of the second component is set to Tm ( deg.C), and has a dry heat shrinkage percentage of <=3%. The second component of the crimped conjugate fiber melting by heating, constituting fibers are heat fused to each other to produce the nonwoven fabric.