Subjective Fabric Evaluation

The number of various existing fabric materials for different usages is unlimited. Therefore it is important to judge each textile material regarding quality and suitability before any manufacturing process. Related fabric characteristics can be subjectively assessed or objectively measured. A new field of research tries to imitate the subjective fabric evaluation method by virtually simulating the touch of fabrics with new haptic and tactile technologies. However, the today existing technology does not allow the rendering of complex interactions between hand and fabric, as it occurs during the real assessment method. Thus, the subjective fabric evaluation needs to be simplified to allow a direct comparison of the real and the virtual process. The main difference of the traditional subjective assessment, where the fabric is touched with both hands, to the simplified one lays basically in the fixation of the fabrics, so that the specimen can be judged with two fingers. The main mechanical properties such tensile, shear, bending, compression, friction, surface and weight have been assessed with the new test arrangement. The results of the assessment have been reported for all tested properties.