Drying and curing tests were performed in a laboratory scale dryer on dyed tufted acrylic fabrics and the latex adhesive backcoating to obtain heat transfer coefficients as a function of the mass velocity of air flowing through the fabric. Treating the fabric as a packed bed of cylindrically shaped fibers, equations were developed making it possible to calculate the flow-through velocity Gtf from measured air velocities directed at the upper and lower faces of the fabric. Correlations obtained for the heat transfer coefficients were h = 2.22 Gtf0.47 for fabric drying and h = 4.84 Gtf0.32 for curing the latex adhesive backcoating ( h in W/m2 K, Gtf in kg/m2h). These results were compared with earlier investigations of the drying in packed beds.