Relationship between friction and tactile properties for woven and knitted fabrics

The relationship between friction and the tactile properties of woven and knitted fabrics was investigated. Coefficients of friction for the fabrics were measured using two devices: a previously developed Textile Friction Analyzer and the Kawabata Evaluation System FB4. The tactile properties of the fabrics were evaluated by a panel, which assessed the roughness and the prickle of textile surfaces in two different blind subjective tests. Correlation between fabric friction and subjectively perceived touch properties was found for knitted, but not for woven fabrics. In order to find out if additional parameters could have influenced the obtained relationship, textile properties such as bending compression, basis weight hairiness and fabric thickness weie investi-gated. Using principal component analysis, we found that the relevant properties in the relationship between friction and the touch properties of fabrics were bending, thickness and compressibility. On the other hand the friction results showed a lack of commonality between the friction analyzer and the Kawabata surface tester, although there seemed to be a negative correlation between the two apparatus. This was attributed to the different testing conditions such as applied load, sliding speed, contact area and material surfaces and illustrated the dependence of fabric friction prop- erties on testing variables.