A Development in the Objective Measurement of the Quality ofKnitted Fabrics Used for Underwear

The quality of the knitted fabrics used for underwear has been evaluated by means of hand judgement for along time by professional experts. In the series of this paper, the objective evaluation of this fabric quality isdeveloped by correlating the subjective quality judged by experts with some of measurable fabric characteristics.In the part 1, these fabric characteristics are selected and their measuring method are investigated. Thecharacteristics selected here are included in the two categories, fabric hand and the thermal/water transportproperty of the fabric.The fabric hands are those three primary hands expressed by hand values which are measured objectively, KOSHI (stiffness), NUMERI (smoothness) and FUKURAMI (fullness and bulkiness) for the quality on thecondition that these fabrics are used in winter season. On the summer season condition, SHARI (crispness) isapplied instead of NUMERI on the winter condition. These hand values are obtained objectively on the basicof fabric mechanical properties measured by KES-F system.Suitable measurement conditions of these mechanical parameters for the underwear fabrics are investigatedfirstly then the suitable equation translating these mechanical parameters into the primary hand values areselected from the translation equations which have been developed for the other type of fabrics.The thermal/water transport properties considered here are : qmax (a measure of warm/cool feeling), Qw (heat loss to air through fabric placed on a wet paper which simulates a wet skin), QD (the same measure as Qw but the fabric is placed on a dry heat plate), K' (heat conductance), MR (equilibrium regain) and WA (the maximum water content).These characteristic values of 80 comercial samples are measured and it is confirmed that these characteristicvalues well separate the fabrics of different quality.