downtoearth-subscribe

Making clothes more comfortable

Making clothes more comfortable WHILE CHOOSING a fabric, fingers may be the best judge of a cloth's quality, but they are not reliable in predicting the cloth's behaviour after it is tailored. Now, a mathematical technique called fuzzy-set theory, may enable textiles to be designed according to predetermined attributes related to comfort and performance over time.

Comfort, or rather discomfort, is largely a tangible response to the feel of the fabric but varies with time and from person to person. Textile engineers need to know how a fabric will behave over time. A fabric may or may not become more comfortable. For instance, wearers who prefer light-weight blazers may find the loss in the weight of wool-fabric uncomfortable. Conversely, some fabrics may grow thicker and some consumers may like it. For this reason, it is difficult to objectively assess the long-term comfort of a fabric on the basis of a single property.

The fuzzy-set theory is ideally suited to taking into account such uncertainties and assesses the comfort behaviour of a cloth with time by evaluating its performance in terms of sets of numerical values.

Using this theory, G H Rong and K Slater of University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, analysed data from two earlier studies. The first study investigated changes over time in a fabric such as softness, thickness, weight and stiffness. The second study assessed the relative importance of comfort-related factors in some garments among female university students.

On the basis of their analysis, Slater and Rong quantified the comfort quality of several fabrics. They obtained a single numerical value that combined the preferences of people for certain kinds of fabric and the response of that fabric to wear, enabling textile designers to make appropriate fabric choices.

Related Content