THE DETERMINATION OF CONTACTS BETWEEN THE CONSTITUENTS OF CUT TOBACCO ASSEMBLIES

Abstract

From the viewpoint of the quality evaluation of cigarettes, the firmness of cigarette is one of the most important properties. It has a high correlation to the bulk density and the stress of the cut tobacco assembly under the compressive conditiíon.
To clarify the compressive characteristics of the cut tobacco assembly, the dye and gelatin tracer techniques were applied to find the relationship between the bulk density of specimens and the number of contact points per cm of the constituent. The state of the specimen-to-tracer contact points was observed. As the samples of this examination, strips in three model forms, i.e., flat, curled and zigzag, were cut out from the uniform sheet reconstituted with the fibrous composition of tobacco leaf, instead of the cut tobacco.
The following results were obtained:
1) The number of contacts per cm of the specimen was related to increase with the increase in the bulk density by,
N=βρ^m_b N: number of contacts per cm of specimen ρ_b: bulk density of specimens (g/cm³) β, m: empirical constant
2) The observation of the tracer attached to the specimen showed that the shreds receive compressive stress predominantly on the flat surfaces. The curled type specimen, in some cases, receives the stress on the side surfaces.