A correlation study of subjective sensorial evaluation and objective softness measurement of wool fabrics

Comfort is one of the most important aspects of clothing, especially for next-to-skin garments such as shirts and trousers for summer. Sensorial comfort has a strong relationship with both the mechanical and surface properties of apparel fabric. A comfortable textile material should have properties of softness, smooth surface or texture, be pleasant to touch and very flexible. When assessing fabric handle subjectively, the assessor usually strokes the fabric surface with one or several fingers and squash the fabric gently in hand. Thus, the perception of such handle includes complex parameters of compression, tactile sensation and textural effect. In this work, we attempted to use a simple technique of objectively evaluating fabric softness related properties, by measuring the force required to pull a fabric strip through a series of parallel pins (the pulling force). We also subjectively rated the fabric handle. The correlation analysis showed very good agreement between the fabric pulling force and subjective hand rating.