Frictional characteristics of woven suiting and shirting fabrics

Abstract

Frictional characteristics of woven shirting and suiting fabrics with different blends and constructional parameters have been studied. Fabric-to-metal surface and fabric-to-fabric frictional characteristics in both warp-warp and weft-weft directions have also been studied. It is observed that the normal load and the frictional force follow the logarithmic relationship for all the fabrics. The nature of fabric friction has been characterized by different parameters, like ratio of frictional force to normal load, friction index, friction parameter and their ratio. Fabric-to-metal friction is found to be less sensitive to fabric morphology and rubbing direction, whereas the fabric-to-fabric friction is highly sensitive to these factors. Fabric-to-fabric friction has been affected by lot of factors, like type of fibre, type of blend, yarn structure, fabric structure, crimp, compressibility, etc. For all the fabrics, the kinetic friction is always lower than the static friction at different levels of normal load and the F/N ratio reduces consistently with the increase in normal pressure.