Determination of featured parameters to cluster stiffness handle of fabrics by the CHES-FY system

The main content dealt with in this paper is to present a new apparatus which can be used to evaluate stiffness handle of textile materials. The comprehensive handle evaluation system for fabrics and yarns (CHES-FY) is the kind of apparatus developed into measuring stiffness handle of fabric based on the pulling-out force and displacement curves. The present work aims to feature indexes from the above curves to explain stiffness handle of fabric. These indexes, including slope and area as well as peak value, were featured from the pulling-out force and displacement curves to discriminate stiffness handle of fabrics by K-means cluster method. In order to verify the effectiveness, the subjective judgments were also made and compared with the objective K-means cluster method. The experimental results show that a good correlation exists between the subjective judgment method and objective cluster method. It indicates that the indexes featured from the pullingout force and displacement curves can be utilized to characterize stiffness handle of fabrics, and the CHES-FY system is feasible in measuring stiffness handle of fabrics.