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A garment is regarded as desirable and beautiful if it covers the body with harmony and gracefulness. High drape, lightweight and soft handle fabrics are in demand, particularly for womenswear garments such as dresses, shirts, skirts, trousers and suits. Fabric drapability can be measured by a number of drapemeters for different modes of drapability such as static, dynamic and revolving. It has been shown that the drape coefficients, Ds , Dd and Dr , associated with these respective modes of drapability can be predicted from a combination of measurements from the KES-F system (Kawabata Evaluation System for Fabrics). In this paper we present the results of our studies on the prediction of drapability of lightweight wool fabrics, based on the KES-F system and drape coefficient predictive equations. It has been shown that the parameters Dr/Ds and Dd/Ds , called Indices of Drape Fluidity, Ir and Id , express the fluid drape behaviour better than Ds , Dr , D200 and Dd . This is because they discriminate and predict the drapability of fabrics better. Ir and Id have higher CV% than the Dr and Dd data, and therefore represent greater relative dispersion in a fabric group for drape. Various drape parameters of a group of wool fabrics have been compared with the four groups of polyester Shingosen fabrics, namely, New Silky, New Worsted, Rayon Touch and Peach Face, which are recognised for their soft fluid drape.

The sensation of prickle from textile garments is directly related to the force that a fiber protruding from the fabric surface can exert on the skin without buckling – its critical buckling load (CBL). Finite element modeling (FEM) has previously been used in the literature to predict CBLs for a set of 25 fibers with different along-fiber morphology. With a view to high-throughput analysis of fibers, we investigated two analytical methods that were potentially faster and less computationally intensive than FEM and applied them to calculate CBLs for the same set of fibers. In addition, we tested a numerical integration and gradient search (NIGS) method that we developed by adapting a previously published, non-FEM, numerical approach. The analytical methods that we tested were either inadequately formulated or prone to instability. Our NIGS method was more reliable that the analytical methods (but slower to compute), and its results appeared more accurate than the published FEM results, based on an inconsistency metric that we developed. The published FEM results and the NIGS predictions agreed within 5% for 60% of the fibers, and within 10% for 72% of the fibers (with differences ranging from 0.4% to 19.1%) and generally showed qualitative agreement on the response of CBL to fiber shape, with some notable exceptions. The response of CBL to dimensional variation was complex. This, and the inconsistency between methods, highlights the need for caution when analyzing complicated biological structures, such as wool, and the value of verifying the reliability of any predictions from any approach.

In an experimental study on the shear behavior of both gray and finished wool and wool blend woven fabrics, we have investigated the effects of finishing and wetting and changes in four shear parameters—initial shear modulus Go, frictional shear stress σ o, shear rigidity G, and residual shear strain tan θ o. We have established correlation coefficients between various shear parameters and have reported the effects of changes in relative humidity on the shear behavior of a finished wool fabric.