Measurement and characterization of bending stiffness for fabrics

Abstract

Aesthetics and handle of end-use textile products mainly depend on bending behaviour, especially for woven and knitted fabrics interlaced by yarns, which necessitates the development of apparatuses that can measure and characterize bending property of yarns and fabrics with the same principle so as to investigate the relationships of bending properties between yarns and fabric. The comprehensive handle evaluation system for yarns and fabrics (CHES-FY) was developed based on multiple properties through single test in principle to measure and characterize weight, bending, friction and tensile properties just by one pulling-out test, whose basic structure and principle of bending step of CHES-FY is just analyzed in present paper. A three-point bending in principle was utilized to model and to describe the bending properties of fabric, and the corresponding formula was obtained for calculating the bending rigidity of sample. The comparisons of bending rigidity based on nineteen fabrics have been conducted by using CHES-FY (both for the yarns and fabrics) and KES-FB2, respectively. The measured results show that there exists high correlations between the two measurement systems for fabrics, and indicates that the approach by using the CHES-FY is feasible and accurate in measuring bending rigidity and characterizing bending behaviour.