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TOTAL HAND: full evaluation of the tactile parameters of fabrics

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INNOVATION & LABORATORIES

14th July 2020

Touch of softness.Young woman enjoying softness of her cozy knitted sweater
Clothing plays an intimate role in our daily lives. The clothes we wear cover and interact with our bodies all day. The quality of a fabric no longer depends only on its appearance (design, binding, printing and colour), its physical properties (strength, elasticity, feel and wrinkling) or its value-added properties (anti-mite, wash & wear), but softness plays a key role in the broad concept of the final quality of a fabric.

The way the fabric feels is described as its “Total Hand Value (THV)”, which has been traditionally used in the textile and clothing industries to describe a fabric’s quality and performance. THV is an objective parameter that measures the feel or hand of a fabric on a scale of 0 to 5, where 5 is excellent and 0 is poor.

Determining the softness of a fabric

The Kawabata Evaluation System (KES) is used to determine the softness of a fabric. The KES, is a system that detects the degree of softness of a garment in a quantitatively and objectively, by analysing a set of variables.

Other new forms of measurement based on these same variables have been developed recently. One of them is the Fabric Touch Tester (FTT).

Comprehensive service offered by AITEX

AITEX is equipped for both tests. The advantage of the FTT equipment is its high speed: It is capable of performing the test in much shorter times than with the Kawabata equipment.

Once again, AITEX offers its clients the most innovative equipment enabling a fabric to be assessed to predict the perception of comfort of the fabric, from the design of the product, manufacturing quality, the final product and consumer satisfactions, while providing a rapid response to our clients.

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