SMOOTHNESS AND ROUGHNESS: CHARACTERISTICS OF FABRIC-TO-FABRIC SELF-FRICTION PROPERTIES

Smoothness and roughness of fabric materials are important fabric tactile properties for engineering design of many textile products including medical textiles, hygiene and healthcare products, sportswear, underwear, lingerie and other consumer products having special requirements in sensitive surface tactile properties. They are assessed by human fingers and hands in subjective evaluations to form personal perceptions of the fabrics, and they are usually characterised by using the friction coefficient and surface roughness profile during human skin (or artificial human skin/finger/probes) sliding against fabric surfaces in haptic science. In this paper, the friction coefficient and its spectrum during a fabric surface sliding against the fabric surface itself in a fabric self-friction process are used to characterise the fabric smoothness and roughness. The dynamic friction coefficients and its frequency analysis of its variations of three different fabric materials are assessed against their surface morphological profile. The application of such characteristics of fabric-to-fabric frictional properties in the engineering design of fabric surface structures and their uses in the objective evaluation of fabric hand and discrimination of fabric are also discussed.