AUTEX 2010 World Textile Conference 21-23 June, 2010 Vilnius SENSORY COMFORT EVALUATION OF WOOL FABRICS BY OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF SURFACE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES A. C. Broega 1 , C. Nogueira 1 , M. E. Cabeço-Silva 1 , M. Lima 2 1 University of Minho, Department of Textile Engineering, School of Engineering, Guimarães, Portugal 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, Guimarães, Portugal cbroega@det.uminho.pt ABSTRACT The sensorial comfort is one of the most important aspects of clothing, mainly for next-to-skin garments such as trousers for summer. The perceived comfort of wearers of these garments depends to a great extent on the tactile properties of the fabrics. One of the most important surface characteristics of fabrics is the friction coefficient. Two laboratory equipments were developed to evaluate this parameter, the KES-FB4 module of Kawabata system and the FRICTORQ. In this research are compared the results of the fabric objective measurements of the surface roughness and friction measured using the KES-FB4 (surface tester) and the friction coefficient measured by FRICTORQ equipment, in light-weight wool fabrics. Key Words: sensorial comfort, textile hand, surface friction 1. INTRODUCTION Several marketing studies point out that modern consumers consider the tactile sensory evaluation one of the most important attributes in their purchase of textiles. Sensorial or tactile comfort, many times just simply identified by “hand”, is essentially a result of how much stress is generated in the fabric and how it is distributed over the skin and therefore has a strong relationship with both the mechanical and surface properties of the fabric. Therefore, one of the most important characteristics of fabrics for clothing is the coefficient of friction [2], although the friction coefficient is not an inherent characteristic of a material or surface, but results from the contact between two surfaces [3]. Recently, a new laboratory instrument (FRICTORQ) was proposed by the authors for the assessment of this property. Several studies were performed in order to find a relationship between friction coefficient (µ), as measured by FRICTORQ, and fabric friction properties measured by other instruments and other surface evaluations based on subjective assessments [3-6]. A comparative study with another widely respected instrument, the KES-FB4 module, is the main purpose of this research. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS The materials in study are composed by light-weight wool fabrics for men summer suits made of high quality fine wool materials commercially available, including Italian “cool wool” coded A1, A2 and A3 (Table 1). The fabrics were design in order to vary the tie factor (from 1 the most tied material, to 0.624 the more loosed material). Those were finished in yarn top dyeing (TD) and the final dry finishing was the same for all fabrics (Shearing, Continuous Decatizing, Kier Decatizing and Steaming). All samples were prepared and tested under a conditioned atmosphere.