Evaluation of impact on hand of terry towels by different treatments

Case 1: A client consigned project on the impact of detergent type

• 6 specimen (or repeats) for each type of terry towels;
• sample types: before washing, water washing only, washed with 6 different types of detergents;
• Results obtained using PhabrOmeter®.

Table below shows the terry towel's Softness and Smoothness data after above mentioned 8 different knind of processes

Remarks: 1. a larger resilience value, a resilient fabric; 2. a larger softness value, a softer fabric; 3. a larger smoothness value, a smoother fabric.

Comments:

• The new towel without any washing is the softest;
• Water-only washing negatively impacts fabric Resilience and Softness;
• Detergent washing causes more deterioration in fabric Resilience and Softness;
• Fabric Smoothness not impacted as severely.

Remarks: Relative Hand Value (RHV) shows the difference of each sample relative to the Control. The smaller the RHV value, the closer the fabric is to the reference, or a better fabric if your control is the most preferred fabric; vise versa if the reference is the least preferred fabric.

Comment: the OMO (UK) detergent has the best overall performance among all.

6 samples of terry towel were washed by the same detergent and after one washing each sample was applied different softener with the same amount.

Relative Hand Value

*No Softener Used fabric was set as the reference fabric. Overall performance rank of each softener product on a base of terry towel fabric:

Comment: the Comfort (UK) softener has the best overall performance among all.

Attributes

Comments:

• The new fabric without any washing is always the softest;
• After detergent washing, if fabric without applying fabric softener, the fabric will be in the worst resilience state.
• The Comfort softener is the top one among all to make fabric softer after washing;

A study published by TU Jili and LIU Jinqiang, Journal of Textile Research, 2013

• 6 terry towels treated by 3 different softeners each at 2 concentrations;
• Results obtained via subjective panel and using PhabrOmeter®.

Conclusion

“ The results showed that PhabrOmeter® not only provides a convenient and efficient way to test fabric hand，including stiffness， softness，smoothness，draping value and relative hand value，but also reveals the effect of different softeners on fabric hand，and the difference between different finish concentrations． If sequencing the samples by softness degree，the order was consistent with that by the subjective evaluation．"