Fabric hand feel and surface characteristics have become important factors affecting consumer purchasing decisions. Therefore, in recent years, fabric researchers and clothing brands have strengthened their evaluation research on fabric hand feel. Fabric feel is the result of people's comprehensive perception of the surface texture of the fabric through touch, vision and hearing.
Classifying and quantifying fabric surface properties can help clothing brands and related researchers analyze and evaluate fabric feel and find improvement solutions. With the continuous advancement of science and technology, fabric feel evaluation and testing have gradually transformed and developed from subjective to objective, and the quantification and digital simulation technology of fabric surface properties have attracted attention.
1. Subjective assessment method
Early classification of fabric texture and feel was primarily accomplished by consumers, textile manufacturers, and textile researchers observing and touching fabrics. Subjective evaluation can more directly reflect people's perception of fabric texture, but the results are not accurate enough. With the development of textile product manufacturing processes, using objective characterization and measurement methods to test the feel of textiles has become the main goal of researchers in the textile industry.
2. Objective assessment method
Since 1955, three major categories of fabric hand testers have been developed: fabric fixed type, test device fixed type and non-contact type.
Type 1 testers prevent fabric curling and slippage from affecting the results during testing. The University of Orleans in France designed a fabric feel testing device. The fabric and the standard are fixed on the upper and lower surfaces respectively. The detection device of the fixed standard moves under set parameters to measure the feel of the fabric under different conditions. However, due to the relatively uneven surface of the fabric, it is easy to ignore the characteristic changes of other parts of the fabric when fixing the fabric, and the tensile deformation of the fabric may also affect the experimental results.
More researchers have chosen to develop a second type of tester that minimizes fabric changes by moving the fabric during the test. Researchers continue to innovate in the development of fixed fabric hand testers for testing devices, including the KES-F developed by Kawabata et al., the fabric simple tester FAST developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the fabric hand evaluation system LUFHES of the University of Leeds, and SDL Atlas. The fabric touch tester FTT, developed in cooperation with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has been put into textile inspection and testing applications.
