Forming fabric having a nonwoven surface coating

Claim 1

An improved forming fabric for a papermaking machine having a machine engaging surface and a sheet support surface wherein the improvement comprises: machine direction and cross machine direction yarns interwoven to form a base fabric, said base fabric having a machine engaging surface and an opposite surface, said opposite surface extending in a plane; and a non-woven array of fibrous strands adhered to said opposite surface and forming fluid flow passageways between said fibrous strands which extend from one surface of said array of fibrous strands to an opposite surface of said array of fibrous strands without first passing through any other fluid flow passageways located between said one surface and said opposite surface of said array of fibrous strands, substantially all of said fibrous strands extending in the direction in which said plane extends, first portions of said opposite surface being covered by said fibrous strands and second portions of said opposite surface not being covered by said fibrous strands, the sum of the areas of said first portions being less than the sum of the areas of said second portions, said first portions and said second portions collectively forming said sheet support surface, said sheet support surface having structural elements formed by said yarns and said fibrous strands, the average span between adjacent structural elements in said sheet support surface being smaller than the average span between adjacent yarns in said base fabric.