THE TACTILE SENSORY EVALUATION OF KNITTED FABRICS: EFFECT OF SOME FINISHING TREATMENTS

Good textile sensory characteristics required by the consumers incites textile industrialists to improve the sensory properties of fabrics. Therefore, several textile finishing processes have been proposed to improve the feel of fabrics. This work investigates the effects of some finishing treatments on the tactile properties using sensory analysis. The studied finishing treatments, namely bleaching, dyeing in different conditions, bio-polishing, softening, emerizing and calendaring, were applied on 100% cotton knitted fabrics. The obtained sensory properties of treated fabrics are in accordance with each finishing treatment aim. Hence, the bio-polishing treatment confers to fabrics a less hairy feeling, softening procures to fabrics a more soft, hairy and elastic feeling and emerizing leads to a more hairy and soft feeling. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The practical use of the research presented in this paper is in the sensory evaluation of textile products. The tactile quality of fabrics is an important selling argument. Thus, the textile industrialists try to optimize the production, and especially finishing processes to improve the fabrics tactile feeling. Therefore, it seems necessary to develop tools describing and grading the sensory quality of the produced fabrics for similar consumers' evaluation.