Textile Community Research Articles

Numerical simulation of woven fabric wrinkling

Fabric’s tendency to wrinkle is crucially important to the textile industry as it impacts on the visual appeal of apparels. Current methods of grading this characteristic are very subjective and inadequate. As such, a quantitative method for assessing fabric wrinkling is of the utmost importance for the textile community. To that end, this paper reports on a numerical study of the wrinkling behaviour of cotton‐ and polyester‐woven fabrics using the cylindre creux test. A fabric trellis shear test method was used in order to describe the viscoelastic behaviour of fabrics. Afterwards, an approach by means of continuous mechanics theory is suggested for numerical simulation of the wrinkle recovery of textile‐woven fabric. The numerical procedure used an explicit dynamic scheme for the quasi‐static problem involving complex nonlinear effects (complex contact conditions). To characterise these coined numeric wrinkles, a state analysis of the normal vectors to the fabric surface was considered.

Paper: Managing Digital Image Repositories as Key Tools in the Preservation of Cultural Objects

A number of preservation efforts are currently under way to develop standardized digital repositories of images and information about cultural objects. At opposite ends of the size spectrum are the Fiber Reference Imaging Library and the World Trade Center Archive digital repositories. Both contain images on fragile objects, both in terms of structural integrity and vulnerability from exposure to uncontrolled environments. At the micro level, to address the needs of textile conservation and research efforts worldwide, the textile community has begun planning for the establishment of a digital repository of textile fibers, for search, access and retrieval by textile conservationists and scientists worldwide. With standardized metadata elements based on the Dublin Core metadata elements; this repository can provide important artifact information for a range of microscopic textile fibers. At the extreme macro level, the 9/11 archive includes an image and information repository of rusting steel columns, large complex composite structures, crushed vehicles, and the Last Column, the final steel support column with large amounts of ephemera attached, such as paper memorabilia, photos, and personal items. These digital repositories of cultural objects pose many digital management challenges, including: Metadata, content and rights management, access and retrieval.

Preliminary validation of a fabric smoothness assessment system

A fabric's tendency to wrinkle is vitally important to the textile industry as it impacts the visual appeal of apparel. Current methods of grading this characteristic, called fabric smoothness, are very subjective and inadequate. As such, a quantitative method for assessing fabric smoothness is of the utmost importance to the textile community. To that end, we propose a laser-based surface-profiling system that utilizes a smart camera to sense the 3-D topography of fabric specimens. The system incorporates methods based on anisotropic diffusion and the facet model for characterizing edge information that ultimately relate to a specimen's degree of wrinkling. We detail the initial steps in a large-scale validation of this system. Using histograms of the extracted features, we compare the output of the system between two studies that total more than 200 fabric specimens. The results show that with the features used so far, this system is at least as good as the current American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) smoothness grading system.

Globalization Forces and the Industrial Restructuring of Greenwood County, South Carolina

This paper uses Greenwood County, South Carolina, as a case study to illustrate the contrasting effects of globalization forces on the industrial restructuring of a local economy. The county's industrial structure, similar to that in many small communities in the Piedmont region of the U.S. South, was dominated by the textile industry for over half of the 20th century. By the latter half of the century, however, the county and other textile communities began to realize the need to diversify their industrial base in order to maintain viable local economies. This need became even more apparent as the textile industry began to shift to lower cost, offshore production areas. More recently, globalization forces via foreign direct investment have benefited the local economy, the most notable example being the location of Fuji Film's North American manufacturing headquarters in the county. Greenwood County provides an example of a community that has been able to "harness the local to capture the global." Arguably, the county should be considered a "maker" region, not unlike the status described for the Greenville-Spartanburg area of the state.

The Dark Side of the Force: A Case Study of Restructuring and Social Capital1

Abstract This paper uses a case study of a Southern textile community to show how a distinct form of social capital is embedded in local networks of power and domination. Textile firms and communities in the South have undergone restructuring: technology and labor processes have modernized, firms have merged, consolidated, or closed, and the number of workers has declined. An analysis of Cannon Mills and its associated mill community of Kannapolis identifies the sources of the paternalist form of social capital that dominated work and community social relations. Corporate mergers, downsizing, technological change, shifts in the labor market, municipal incorporation, and labor organizing contributed to the transformation and decline of paternalistic social capital. The case study reminds social scientists that social capital is a context dependent form of power that can be created, accumulated, or destroyed. While many current analyses treat social capital as an unquestioned positive force, the case study reveals the dark side of social capital.

What do we need a union for?: the TWUA in the South, 1945-1955

The rise in standards of living throughout the U. S. in the wake of World War II brought significant changes to the lives of southern textile workers. Mill workers' wages rose, their purchasing power grew, and their economic expectations increased--with little help from the unions. Timothy Minchin argues that the reasons behind the failure of textile unions in the postwar South lie not in stereotypical assumptions of mill workers' passivity or anti-union hostility but in these large-scale social changes. Minchin addresses the challenges faced by the TWUA--competition from nonunion mills that matched or exceeded union wages, charges of racism and radicalism within the union, and conflict between its northern and southern branches--and focuses especially on the devastating general strike of 1951. Drawing extensively on oral histories and archival records, he presents a close look at southern textile communities within the context of the larger history of southern labor, linking events in the textile industry to the broader social and economic impact of World War II on American society.

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

Small firms and industrial districts, structural explanations of small firm viability in three countries

The paper compares three European textile communities, Como (Italy), Leicester (UK) and Lyons (France), chosen on the basis of the large numbers of small firms operating within them and using data collected by the authors via a postal questionnaire and one-to-one interviews. Discarding the more traditional approach to small firms which sees them as individual and autonomous units, the paper applies the industrial district model to the three areas. Firms are therefore studied in their relation both to each other and to the whole community. Each area is found to possess a quite distinct industrial organization but their performance varies greatly. Our approach throws into clear relief the strength of an industrial district such as Como as well as the difficulties faced by an industrial community (as opposed to a district) such as Leicester. Poor local inter-firm relations go some way towards explaining these difficulties, as does the positioning of the entire community of firms vis-a-vis external agents, es...

Rex vs Arkwright, 1785: A judgment for patents as information

Rex vs Arkwright, 1785: A judgment for patents as information

Textile Workers and Union Sentiment

Although southern textile zvorkers typically are portrayed as anti-union and extremely deferential, there is little empirical evidence to support such an assertion. We present data from 208 textile uvorkers in a southern textile community without any unionized mills. We find that paternalistic class relations are still a factor in wvorker attitudes but that wvorkers also express higher levels of activism and union support than expected. 'The continued presence of paternalism in the textile industry is explained in terms of a peripheral industry within a peripheral region. Variations in union support are related most strongly to length of time at the current mill, gender, and amounts of deference and activism expressed. Nestled in the foothills of north Georgia is an interesting community of 20,000 people which has the distinction of being the world capital of tufted textile production. The 150 mills in the area produce over 60 percent of the carpet in the United States (McGregor and Maxey). Neither the success of the mills nor the size of the workforce has attracted union organizers into the area and the workers have shown no signs of organizing themselves. Management points with pride to the well-adjusted, contented workforce and the spirit of togetherness which characterizes production. These aspects, and others to be described later, aroused our curiosity about the way these workers would perceive unions. Certainly the literature on class consciousness and union attitudes is slanted toward workers who are union members (e.g., Buttel and Flinn; Leggett; Manis and Meltzer, a; Zingraff and Schulman). This community presents the opportunity to study non-unionized workers who appear to be, and are described by management as being, deferential, non-assertive, and uninterested in unions.

The position of workers in a textile community: Fall River in the early 1880s

The position of workers in a textile community: Fall River in the early 1880s