Abstract
A new method is proposed for the on-line measurement of the fiber orientation of sheet materials. The measurement of fiber orientation is very important in manufacturing paper sheets, non-woven fabrics, and glass sheets, because fiber orientation strongly affects product properties represented by, for example, dimensional stability of paper. A method developed in this research utilizes anisotropy of dielectric constants of sheet materials as a key characteristic to determine the fiber orientation. The new on-line sensor, consisting of 5 microwave dielectric resonators set in different directions, was designed to detect the fiber orientation while paper is running with high speed on a paper machine. This sensor can determine the direction and the degree of fiber orientation from the measured direction of the maximal dielectric constant and its variation, respectively. The fundamental performance of this system was examined by the static measurement of printing grade paper, which gave a satisfactory result. Then, the dynamic measurements were done at a speed of 1,000 m/min by using a high-speed test-coating machine.