Quality inspection and prediction of the comfort of fabrics finished with functional polymers

Abstract

Textile’s primary hand (HV) and total hand values (THV) are very important parameters and are used to identify the quality of clothing comfort. This paper aims to predict the HV and THV of the fabrics finished with functional polymers by applying Kawabata’s translation equations. The mechanical properties were achieved using Kawabata’s fabric evaluation system (KES-F) and the inference/interpretation was drawn. Then, HV and THV predictions were performed by applying Kawabata’s translation equations of the KN-101 and KN-301 series. The KES-F result confirmed that it is possible to observe the operative finishing effect on the mechanical properties of fabrics. The prediction results show that the total quality comfort of the functional fabrics could able be estimated by the equation developed by Kawabata; the calculated errors (~0.66) were within the range of the standard deviations (~0.78) of the samples between the predicted and ranked THV. The experimental and the calculated primary hand values showed strong correlation coefficients up to ~0.98 which is significant at 0.001 confidence levels. As actual functional fabrics with various surface properties were provided to estimate their tactile comfort via the equations, the result verified that the equation is reliable for the tactile comfort evaluation and grading.