1. Introduction
The term ‘nonwoven fabric’, which is usually shortened to ‘nonwoven’, refers to an assembly of individual fibres or filaments that are bonded by means of friction and/or cohesion and/or adhesion [1e4]; as such, nonwovens differ fundamentally from
conventionally manufactured woven or knitted fabrics insofar as they are typically not based on intermeshed or interlaced yarns. Since, in the manufacture of nonwovens,