Objective evaluation of terry fabric hand

The subjective evaluation of fabric hand restricts the scientific understanding of the fabric properties and also limits the application of designing engineering principles to develop high-quality fabrics. Hence, an objective hand evaluation system for terry fabric has been devised in this research work. The sensor of KES-FB4 instrument, used for measuring frictional properties, was modified and the results were used for the development of new hand equations. Four primary hand equations and one total hand equation have been developed using low-stress mechanical properties of terry fabric. It is observed that fabric weight and thickness, compression and surface properties can predict the hand behavior of terry fabric very well. The objective hand values calculated by the newly developed hand equations correlate very well with the subjective hand values.