AATCC (American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists) has recently approved a testing method using PhabrOmeter on fabric hand as a standard and it will appear in the 2013 AATCC Manual.

The PhabrOmeter® system, a fabric quality evaluation system, has been developed by Nu Cybertek in California, USA.

It measures the “feels and looks”, or so called “sensory perceptions”, of such sheet type fibrous products as paper, woven and knitted fabrics, non-woven, leathers and others, in contact with human skin when in use. Sensory perception has long been considered as one of the most important quality attributes for those products and yet difficult to test using instrument.

The system consists of an instrument and a software package. The system deploys the pattern recognition theory, by extracting the quality characteristics of the product and connecting them to the human sense, so as to provide fast and reliable quality evaluation results. It fills a very important blank.

Main Quantified Data

• Relative Hand Value - Against a reference fabric, an overall fabric performance ranking of a set of fabric samples tested.
• Drape Index - The extraction test is in fact a forced drape so it should be able to describe the fabric dynamic drape behavior. The test results can be used for drape test and comparison.
• Wrinkle Recovery Rate - After the first measurement of a given fabric sample, the sample is then allowed for recovery for 5 minutes (ASTM), and is tested again.

Additional Test Results for Product

• Softness - Compressibility may be judged by squeezing a crumpled piece of fabric in your hand.
• Smoothness - Surface friction is a surface's resistance to slipping. Surface it can be thought of as how hard you have to push your fingertip to move it across a fabric.
• Stiffness - Any material that is easily bent may be described as flexible, limp, or pliable; stiff and rigid are the antonyms.