Abstract
Recently, many researches have been focused on functional fabrics with a high level of wear comfort. Many descriptive models have been developed based on the subjective feeling determined through a series of wear trials. Furthermore, some comprehensive standardized methods were developed by combining the measurement devices and statistical modeling methodology. Most of researches in the field take a similar approach that is to try to build prediction models for objective comforts by finding correlation between a series of data measured and subjective rating. The approaches, however, have serious problems of low repeatability and reproducibility. This research is aimed at exploring the feasibility of applying the Quad analysis to evaluate subjective tactile properties. The traditional 'rating scale method' has been replaced by a new method to produce more reliable subjective evaluation results. The tactile properties of the sportswear fabrics in the market have been measured by KES-FB, and correlated with the subjective rating obtained by the paired comparison experiments of the Quad analysis. The evaluation method developed in this study has been found to be more reliable both in repeatability and reproducibility.
