Journal of Textile Science & Engineering

The human being needs more comfort on clothing than its color, design and appearance. Drape is one of the important factor influencing the aesthetics and comfort of fabrics. In the initial days fabric drape was measured by using Cusick’s drape meter. Due to technology development and up gradation several instruments were developed by many researchers. In this research work one such latest technology was used to measure fabric drape in three dimensional way using SURFER software.

Here, the instrument used for measuring fabric drape was slightly modified from the Cusick Drape meter. The perforated circular disc was placed over the sample to measure the xyz coordinates of sample on radials range from 9.5cm to 14.5cm at each 5o intervals. The civil engineers use XYZ coordinates to measure the surface the of land profile (either hill or valley) using software. The same concept was followed to measure the profile of drape in three dimensional way using SURFER software. The xyz values are fed as input to the software and it generates contour lines, 3D view, vector lines, drape volume and drape profile area as output.

The drape coefficient was computed from the volume of drape profile and analyzed to study the effect of six different seams, seam directions and number of stitches with two different stitch densities. The seam type, number of stitches (single/double), their interaction density * number of stitches and stitch density * seam have significant effect on volume based drape coefficient.

The calculated volume (obtained from average radius and height) is compared with volume generated by SURFER software method and it was found that there is significance difference exists.

Today everybody wishes for that his/her dress retains just ironed shape. Wrinkle free finishes provide wrinkle free and soft look fabric. Wrinkle free finishes are broadly used in the textile industry to impart wrinkle-resistance to cellulosic materials such as cotton fabric. The application of wrinkle resistance (permanent or durable press) finishes on the fabric improves their wrinkle resistance property. Because of increasing demand for pure cotton fabrics, permanent press finishes are being used on these clothes. In conventional durable press finishing, there are two types of products used (resin type and reactant type). Both of these products contain formaldehyde which cause human carcinogen. Hence durable press finishes free of formaldehyde with trade namesTexicil DC, Knittex RCT, Arkofix NEC and Arkofix ELF (Dihydroxi ethylene urea and Demethyldihydroxi urea) were used in this research study. The present work endeavors to optimize the application of these wrinkle free finishes at various concentrations trying different techniques of applying these finishes on pure cotton fabric for best manufacturing results. The results revealed that the finish Arkofix ELF and Arkofix NEC showed superior results at the concentration level 120 g/l under Pad-flash –cure method of application for the wrinkle free property of the fabric.

The transfer of Near Infrared (NIR) calibration models for the determination of total trash, leaf trash and non-leaf trash components in cotton fibers was conducted between two sets of samples. These samples to be analyzed are inhomogeneous in a bulky state whereas the samples used as calibrations were homogeneous in a ground state. The efficacy of the model transfer was evaluated based on instrumental leaf grade readings of “as is” diverse samples, because current-in-use trash tests cannot generate the trash amount for individual trash components. Results indicated that the predictions from the direct model transfer were unreliable, but they might be acceptable after the correction or conversion of original predictions with standard samples.