Original article

The hand of textiles definitions,

achievements, perspectives a review

Textile Research Journal

82(14) 14571468
! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0040517512438126
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Izabela Luiza Ciesielska-Wrobel and Lieva Van Langenhove

Abstract
The aims of this wide-range review concerning the hand of textiles are to present:
(1) the diversity of definitions and the complexity of analysis of the hand of textiles;
(2) the authors own definition of the hand of textiles and division of techniques of its analysis.
The review presents objective techniques, subjective techniques along with their physiological background, and a
combination of techniques as well as a new biomechanical approach called modelling of skin.
The structure of the paper is as follows:
 definitions of the hand of textiles, including the authors definition;
 objective techniques of hand measurement;
 physiological approach;
 subjective techniques of hand measurement;
 combination of objective and subjective techniques;
 modelling techniques and the biomechanics approach for measurement of the hand of textiles;
 division of hand measurement techniques according to the authors.
This paper gives a review of the international literature from 1930 to 2010 concerning the hand of textiles and other
related subjects like skin physiology, perception though the skin, and biomechanical aspects of the skin.
Due to obvious limitations the authors have chosen only those papers which seemed to have the strongest relation to
the presented topic and which are at the same time the most interesting studies in the authors opinion.

Keywords
Hand of textiles, subjective hand, objective hand, hand measurement techniques, model of the skin, biomechanical
modelling

Introduction

Definitions of hand

The hand of textiles has been a subject of hundreds of

analyses since the 1930s, when Peirce1 made an attempt
at an objective estimation of hand related features. It
was believed that some of the general features of textiles
like softness or stiness could be related to the mechanical analysis of those textiles; for example, stiness
could be measured during exural rigidity tests. The
results of those mechanical test analyses were to be
the objective equivalent of the subjective judgement of
stiness. Although this and other similar studies24
have been performed, until the present moment, hand
has not had a uniform and concise denition mainly
because of its subjective nature and due to obstacles
to nding the relation between feelings related to textiles when they are handled.

The hand of textiles is a crucial element inuencing the

purchase of textiles by individuals. Knowing the hand
features of produced textiles and being able to analyse
or predict them on the basis of textile components
could provide producers and hand analysis experts
with a tool which would allow individuals to be assured
of nal products with the best hand features, which

Department of Textiles, Ghent University, Belgium

Corresponding author:
Izabela Luiza Ciesielska-Wrobel, Department of Textiles, Ghent
University, Technologiepark 907 B-9052 Zwijnaarde, Ghent, Belgium
Email: Izabela.CiesielskaWrobel@UGent.be

1458
may refer also to the judgement of ergonomic or sensorial and thermal wear comfort.5,6
The hand (or handle) has been dened in many ways
so far. Depending on the author of the denition of the
hand of textiles and the orientation of his or her studies,
it is dened as:
. a subjective assessment of a textile obtained from the
sense of touch;7
. a property judged as a function of the feel of material, its roughness, smoothness, harshness, pliability,
thickness, and so on;8
. a quality expressed by an individual reaction
through the sense of touch upon examining a
fabric or one or more fabrics of the same quality;9
. impressions that arise when fabrics are touched,
squeezed, rubbed, or otherwise handled;10
. a persons estimation when feeling the cloth between
the ngers and thumb.11 The authors of the denition made an assumption according to which both
static and dynamic coecients of friction between
the textile materials surfaces and the thumb or ngers are the factors inuencing the subjective
judgement;
. all the sensations that are felt by the ngers if the
cloth is handled;12
. a tactile evaluation associated with fabrics which
markedly inuences consumer preferences for textile
products;13
. a feeling which comes from the mechanical properties of the fabrics;14
. the psychological phenomenon of perception of
a pattern obtained from knowledge gained by
the sense of touch of a nger on a fabric
transmitted by the nervous system and assessed by
the brain.2
These denitions clearly present lack of congruency,
as mentioned above. This is also the reason why this
area still arouses great interest.
On the basis of our own experience and studies we
propose our own denition of the subjective hand of
textiles:
The hand of textiles based on the holding of the textile
or the smoothing of the textile with the palm is an act
of experiencing the textiles thickness and surface, and
other textile physical features against the skin of the
palm which evokes the impressions related to physical
features of the material perceived by the ngers and
palm skin receptors and transferred neurologically to
the cerebral cortex. The judgement is given after referring to the personal experience of the person who
makes this judgement as well as his or her natural
skin sensibility.

Textile Research Journal 82(14)

The subjective hand analysis techniques are related
to analysis of the opinion of users of textiles by the
application of dierent interview and questionnaire
methodologies used after an appropriate presentation
of textiles. The subjective analyses are usually direct
methods of making hand measurements, which means
that they categorize the fabrics immediately by describing them using adjectives, for example softhard, limp
sti, coldwarm, smoothrough, and so on.
Due to the large number of data involved, a statistical analysis and articial neural networks are applied
to draw conclusions15 and to create a learning
machine16 to learn how to perceive the textiles, thus
allowing prediction of the subjective hand.17
The other pole represents the objective hand analysis
techniques, which are related to analysis of chosen
mechanical properties of textiles to form components
of a nal value or feature called the hand of textiles.
Though these kinds of techniques were not developed
rst, it seems to be logical to present them as a primary
technique before subjective techniques due to their
technical antecedence to subjective techniques and to
give a better understanding and ow while reading
the paper.
Usually, objective methods do not characterize the
hand directly; they provide certain mechanical parameters that are believed to present components of hand,
like fabric stiness and compressibility. However, there
are also objective and direct methods at the same time.
As a result of the measurements they indicate only
some aspects of hand of the fabric. Examples are the
ring method and the slot method. They give information concerning drapability and frictional features of
textile materials.18

Hand of textiles versus their mechanical

properties
One of the oldest and most inuential studies, by
Peirce,1 established a base for many scientic works
carried out in the eld of the hand of textiles. It lays
the foundations for the analysis of bending length, exural rigidity, and bending modulus. It also explains the
inuence of air humidity while taking the measurements and time of taking the measurements on the
results.
It is necessary to perform physical tests that analyse
and reect the sensations felt and to assign numerical
values to the measurements. We already know today
that what is mentioned here is just a base. The hand
of textiles is far more than that.
Studies are being developed in which trials are based
on the relation between the yarns in the material and
the fabric hand, like the paper describing fabric stiness
on the basis of hanging the heart test; compliance on

Ciesielska-Wrobel and Van Langenhove

the basis of the shape of a forceelongation curve; liveliness on the basis of a recorder trace test; leanness and
bulk of textiles on the basis of coverage denition; compressibility and thickness on the basis of the concept of
springs; and contact warmth, drape, smoothness, and
lustre as well as covering power and contour retention
and resilience.18,19
However the most meaningful studies related to the
hand of textiles were performed by Sueo Kawabata and
Masako Niwa. They established the Hand Evaluation
and Standardization Committee (HESC) to nally
create the so-called Kawabata System (KES). Japans
Textile Machinery Society has published standards
incorporating samples of appropriate fabrics for the
overall fabric hand called the Total Hand Value
(THV) focusing on mens winter suitings.18 The
Committee elaborated similar types of standards for
fabric hand attributes or Primary Hand Value (PHV)
considered important in the fabric hand evaluation of
both mens winter and summer suiting fabrics and
ladies thin dress materials. The PHV attributes
chosen by the HESC are koshi (stiness), numeri
(smoothness), and fukurami (fullness and softness).
The PHVs for mens summer suitings are koshi, shari
(crispness), hari (spread, anti-drape), and fukurami.14,18
The instrument called KES manufactured by Kato
Tech. Co. of Kyoto measures physical, mechanical,
and surface properties of fabrics using four separate
instruments.
The KES system has been successfully applied in the
analysis of many kinds of textiles including hygienic
textiles like nonwovens20,21 and blankets.22 Knitted
structures can be estimated by means of the KES
system.23 There is also a large group of publications
that verify the hand of textiles by means of the KES
system by comparing dierent textiles with each other
and applying some modications to the measuring
technique or comparing dierent methodologies.
It has been proved that the weave and yarn density,
raw materials,24 and nishing25 inuence the hand of
textiles. Finishing has a considerable eect on the bending properties of all woven fabrics and knitted synthetic
fabrics, although the eect is less for knitted wool fabrics; the frictional resistance to deformation (in both
bending and shear) is always much more critically
aected by nishing than the elastic rigidity of the
fabric. Fabric bending properties depend on fabric
thickness and other constructional variables, but
shear properties show much less systematic variation
with such parameters and are largely determined by
the type of fabric construction itself.18,26
To overcome certain limitations of that set of modules a new set of devices called the Fabric Assurance by
Simple Testing (SiroFAST) system has been developed
by the Division of Wool and Technology at the

1459
Australian Commonwealth Scientic and Industrial
Research Organization to meet industry needs for a
simple fabric performance tester.
The SiroFAST system for objective measurements of
fabric mechanical properties has been developed to
measure the properties of fabric that are important in
the manufacture of garments. It has not been oriented
towards hand measurements; however it turned out
that it may provide outputs similar to KES from the
measurements of fabric samples so the results of the
tests performed on the fabric samples may be used to
estimate the hand of fabric. It is believed that this
system is less complex to use. It consists of three instruments and a test for dimensional stability.
Although the measurements are relatively simple in
comparison to Kawabata measurements, the interpretation of the results is still complex.18,26
However there are some alternatives to KES,
SiroFAST, and Fabric Automated Modular and
Optimisation Universal System (FAMOUS)27,28 like
Instron, which estimates the mechanical properties of
the materials. The idea of involvement and adaptation
of the Instron device to measure hand features of
fabric came from the relative lack of accessibility of
all modules of the KES system in the past, and most
of all due to the need for an alternative to the timeconsuming test by KES. Details of the performance of
the test to estimate the mechanical parameters of textiles related to the hand of these textiles with using an
Instron were describe by the studies of Pan et al.29 and
others.3032
The diculties of tests performed with Instron in
comparison with KES are related to keeping an appropriate level of stress of the sample, which should be
lower than the stress at rupture; however the stress
level should allow non-linear characteristics of the
tested sample to be detected. The second diculty
and inconvenience is related to the shear test. The tensile test has been modied so that the shear test can be
performed with Instron. The shear test has been
replaced by the tensile test and the test for the tension
of the sample at 45 to the warp and weft direction is
performed with Instron. Although some divergences
have been reported between the shear test and the diagonal tensile test, both tests supply very similar information when low stress analysis is performed.32
Other studies present the development of unilateral
devices for measuring only some features of the hand
of textiles, for example the Fabricometer,
Handleometer, and fabric stiness meter.3335 One
technique for fabric handle is based on the use of a
simple device tted to a tensile testing machine, and
measures the force generated while passing a fabric
specimen through a ring. The method proved capable
of detecting dierences in fabric handle between

1460
comparable fabrics. The force needed to withdraw
the fabric through the ring increases as more of
the specimen is introduced into the ring. The maximum value of the force occurs when the entire
specimen has nearly passed through the ring. The
fabric specimen gets folded, sheared, bent, compressed,
and rubbed against the interior wall of the ring during
withdrawal.35
The El MogahzyKilinc hand measuring method is
worth mentioning as a modication of the unilateral
direct subjective method of estimation of the hand of
textiles18 The idea of using a funnel medium instead of
a ring or slot arrangement is to provide better simulation of fabric hand. The contoured exible surface of
the light funnel simulates anticipated hand modes such
as drapability, stretch, and surface friction.
Pan36 has built a commercially available instrument
based on the extraction method, which pushes a fabric
through a ring. The testing methodology has been fully
computerized and the extraction curve (displacement
vs. extraction force) provides more data to compare
to previous attempts.
The FAMOUS system27,28 oers the possibility of
performing measurement under a complex load similar
to real usage of the material. The bending rigidity test
has been modied to compare to KES and is performed
in the form of a buckling test. The sample is subject to
buckle in the horizontal plane. The system uses the
same rules for the tensile, shearing and compression
tests as the KES in the form of a single device, contrary
to KES and FAST.

Textile Research Journal 82(14)

other related forms physical properties. The relation
between these dierent aspects of the tactile features is
not clearly understood. To touch is to use ones skin to
have physical contact with another object.
The following description presents only selected
aspects of skin physiology. They allow a better
understanding of the perception of textiles through
the skin.
Tactile receptors are located in clusters in human
skin and look like jelly material. When they are stimulated or squeezed in some way, the layers rub against
each other, causing an electrical nerve impulse to be
generated.
The skin of the hand, in particular, is highly specialized to provide detailed tactile feedback.3741 The information about the external and internal environment
activates the central neural system of the human by
means of dierent receptors. These receptors are transformers, in fact: they transform dierent forms of
energy in the surroundings of the organism into functional potentials in neurons.
Nerve and muscle cells and receptors belong to a
class of excitable cells. In response to dierent stimuli
(chemical, electrical, mechanical) a perturbation of
a membrane cell potential may take place, which
leads to the induction of functional potentials (the
unit is mV).

Organs of the skin sense

There are four types of skin senses:

Perception of textiles a physiological

approach
For a better understanding of the complexity of subjective hand assessment a physiological background is presented. Haptic sensing analysis (tactile sensing) comes
before subjective hand assessment, as that methodology
is based on personal appreciation of the object by the
sense of touch.
The tactile sense does not possess any localized sensory organ in contrast to the visual and auditory
senses.37 In fact, the sense of touch operates all over
the skin like a distributed phenomenon. Additionally,
in terms of the area covered by the senses, the transduction of tactile signals is distributed over a considerably wider surface than a single localized sensory organ
such as eyes or ears. The nature of tactile sensing
through the skin is not simply the transduction of one
physical property into an electrical signal. This is
mainly because the sense of touch assumes many
forms.37,38 These forms include the detection of temperature, texture, shape, force, friction, pain, itching, and

.
.
.
.

touch/grip (grip is a sustained touch);

cold;
warmth;
pain.3740

The appropriate receptors for these skin senses are

not equally distributed.

Sensing touch
The glabrous (hairless) skin of the hand contains the
most nerve endings. There are approximately 17,000
mechanoreceptors in the skin, comprising Meissners
corpuscles, Merkel disks, Runi endings, and
Pacinian corpuscles, and they are dierentiated into
classes depending on their receptive elds and the
speed and intensity with which they adapt to static
stimuli. The receptors which sense touch are most
often in the skin of ngers and lips. The sensing bres
which transfer the impulses from the touch sensing
receptors to the central nervous system have a transfer
speed of 3070 m/s.37,40

Ciesielska-Wrobel and Van Langenhove

Itch and tickling

A weak irritation of the skin by passing objects (textiles) on the surface of the skin can evoke the feeling of
itch and/or tickling. This is especially important when
analysing the hand of textiles. The feeling of tickling is
usually pleasant and the feeling of itch is annoying. The
itch feeling may be evoked either by chemicals that
iritate the skin or by repeated mechanical local irritation of the skin.40,41

Temperature
There are separate sensors in the skin which are sensitive
to cold and warmth. There are four to ten times more
sensors which are cold-sensitive than sensors which are
warmth-sensitive. Receptors which sense the cold react
to temperatures in the range 1038 C, and receptors
which sense warmth react in the range 3045 C.
Sensing temperature is strongly related to sensing touch.
So receptors sensing warmth react to textiles being in
contact with the surface of the skin. It is believed that
the same area in the cortex of the brain that absorbs the
information about stimuli is used by both types of
receptors.
Due to the positioning of the sense organs under the
scarfskin, their response depends on the temperature of
hypodermic tissues. So, cold metal subjects seem to be
even more cold than wooden subjects cooled down to
the same temperature because metal transfers the heat
from the skin faster than wooden material, which
means it cools down hypodermic tissues more.3741

Detection of force
When a force is applied to the tip of the nger, the
large, receptive, rapidly adapting Pacinian corpuscle
units located all over the nger will re, indicating a
stimulation occurring somewhere. As a result, the small
receptive eld fast adapting (FA) units around the location of the application of the force will also re. If,
however, the stimuli are held stationary, the slowly
adapting (SA) units I and II will consequently exhibit
aerent responses. It has been suggested that the SA II
units are very sensitive to tangential forces, while
the SA I units might code both normal and
shear forces.3740 With regard to the individual receptors, the Merkel disks are reported to respond to both
compressive and shear forces, and free nerve endings
are sensitive to slight pressures.

Detection of position and size

The FAs units provide information with regard to the
position, while SA I units indicate the size of the

1461
stimuli. However, the Pacinian corpuscle units and
SA II units are also active, indicating that something
is happening somewhere.3741

Detection of softness/hardness
It has been speculated that the sensation of softness
may correlate with activity in the SA I bres because
their rate of ring is determined by the amount of sustained deformation. However, softness/hardness perception requires vertical motion, and thus the rapidly
adapting units might contribute to the perception of
softness, indicating local stimulation. The Pacinian corpuscle units will also be active for the same reason as
discussed in the case of position and size stimuli.3741

Detection of roughness and texture

Roughness, like other aspects of hand, has no unied
denition. However, in relation to the perception of
roughness by the human nger, it can be dened as
undulations or protrusions of a surface that are of a
much smaller scale than the ngertip but large enough
to permit tactual discrimination between the surface in
question and the one that is smooth.3741 Roughness
perception is made by the lateral movement of the
nger over a surface. When the nger is moving over
the surface, the Pacinian corpuscle units all over the
nger will re, providing information about the stimulation of the nger. It has been suggested that roughness is related to vibration sensing, with the Pacinian
corpuscles presumed to code high frequency vibration
and the FAs to code low frequency vibrations. It has
been proposed that because the roughness measurements require both normal and shear forces, the SA
units could not be excluded in roughness measurement.
The Pacinian corpuscles are also sensitive to vibration
and may code roughness. In addition to roughness,
both compliance and viscoelasticity contribute to surface texture. The human hand perceives those properties through the vibrations set up in the skin as the hand
moves across the object.3741 Table 1 presents a concise
summary of the relationships between attributes of
fabric hand and the appropriate receptor or receptors.

Hand of textiles versus subjective

techniques for its estimation
The hand of textiles is by denition subjective. So it is
related to individual perception and sensitivity of the
skin receptors of the human hand.
The analysis of subjective assessment of the hand of
textiles was performed parallel to and independently
from the objective techniques. Various physical characteristics of a fabric combine to produce the

1462

Textile Research Journal 82(14)

Table 1. The characteristics of skin mechanoreceptors skilled to react on fabric features composing certain attributes of fabric
hand.3741
Name of the
mechanoreceptor
Number of
receptors (cm2)
Sensed parameters

Attributes of fabric
hand

Pacinian corpuscle

Ruffini endings

Merkels disc

Meissners
corpuscle

Free nerve endings

21

49

70

140

connected to many

touch, roughness,
vibrations

pressure on skin
and skin stretch

pressure of the skin

and texture

vibration, touch

softness/ hardness/
roughness

compressibility/
elasticity/
harshness/ slippery

roughness/
hairiness/

slippery

responds to
mechanical,
thermal, or noxious
stimulation
cold/ warmth/
elasticity

phenomenon of hand, from one side, and dierences in

assessments of hand originate from dierences in
human background and abilities to detect this complex
behaviour, from the other side.33
There are many dierent approaches related to the
analysis of hand in a subjective manner. Usually a
group of experts is asked to estimate the hand of textiles
by, for example, holding them. However there are tests
that engage both expert and ordinary users of textiles33
that can use dierent registers to describe their perceptions.42 Sometimes an interview with an unskilled user
is applied.43 In such cases a bipolar system of description of the tested fabric is often used.
The unskilled user of textiles is asked to judge
whether the textiles presented to him or her are sti
or pliable, soft or hard, elastic or inelastic, springy or
limp, compact (dense) or open (loose), rough or
smooth, harsh or slippery, and warm or cool.
However, unskilled users are also asked to rank features like smoothness, softness, rmness, coarseness,
thickness, warmth, harshness, stiness, liveliness, and
so on, by giving them values from 0 (no attribute) to
5 (a very strong attribute)43 or by ranking a total hand
from excellent to poor.15 Separate issues are related to
the manner and the order of the presentation of samples and the scenario of the test, such as how many
samples should be estimated by users at once (fatigue
has a possible negative inuence),43 as well as the
colour, structure, surface, and external conditions
(light). It seems logical that the colours of the estimated
samples should be the same or at least similar when
presented to unskilled users to avoid the inuence of
the personal preference of the judges. Another issue is
the development of vocabulary that refers to hand estimation and psychological inuences on judgements;44
experts and non-experts tend to use dierent descriptors.45 Some other studies have developed a touch
vision relation to verify whether two senses can mediate
similar ratings of texture attributes.4649 Blind tests are

performed to prevent the persons haptic perception

from being inuenced by visual perception, so the
person can only touch the samples without viewing
them.45
It seems that the uniformity of the group of persons who estimate the hand subjectively is important.
Nationality, age (the sense of touch, suers from deleterious eect of age the eects of ageing are substantially greater in the Pacinian corpuscles than in other
mechanoreceptors), gender, touching time, applied
force, the speed of nger movement,50 menstrual cycle
(cutaneous sensitivity to painful stimuli, to changes in
skin temperature, and to tactile stimulation have also
been found to vary with the menstrual cycle; after the
onset of menstruation, thresholds of Pacinian corpuscles increase reaching maximum near the ovulation
time) and occupational activity,5155 with educational
background as a secondary issue along with everyday
life, all have an inuence on the ngertips skin surface
quality.
As reported previously,56 individual observers dier
considerably in their ability to rank fabrics with respect
to stiness and liveliness, and if the fabrics dier only
slightly, the opinion of one observer may be of little
value, especially if he or she is unskilled. It was also
found that the mean stiness and liveliness scores of a
group of observers could be closely correlated with the
results of the cloth-bending hysteresis test, which is
therefore more valuable than the assessment of one or
two individuals.
A technique based on the semantic dierential
method of consumers approach to hand knitting
yarns has been developed to establish an appropriate
register for use in studies. The divergences between prediction of the hand of the fabric and general perception
on the basis of the hand of the yarn itself as a component of that fabric were analysed. It seems that
responses to yarns in the ball state and the fabric
state dier markedly in some instances, indicating

Ciesielska-Wrobel and Van Langenhove

that at the point of purchase, initial impressions may
prejudice purchasing decisions.57
To provide information related to specic expressions, evaluators were given written denitions of ve
quality words or attributes that might inuence the
hand preference, which are quoted as an example and
another proof of the importance of using a register that
is uniform. According to the authors:58
. Stiness is the resistance to bending: if the fabric
bends easily, it is exible and not sti.
. Stretchiness: if the fabric can be easily stretched by
pulling without tearing, it is a stretchy fabric.
. Smoothness suggests a fabric surface that feels free
from roughness and will resist a little bit to slipping
when rubbed.
. Weight: is the heaviness, mass of the fabric.
. Thickness: the distance between the top surface of
the fabric and the bottom surface. If this distance is
small, the fabric is thin, if the distance is big, the
fabric is thick.
Correlations established between primary hand
expressions and mechanical properties show that subjective qualities such as bendability and stretchability
can be reliably indicated by simple laboratory tests;
however, measurements of the friction coecients fail
to correlate with the sensory perception of surface
smoothness.

Combination of objective and

subjective systems
There are many works that combine both objective and
subjective systems for measuring hand,3,59 as it is
believed that objective systems do not ensure a full representation of hand due to their lack of a human element. Conversely, subjective methods are believed to be
dependent on temporary human moods, which can be
easily observed in tests with consumers, rather than
trained experts, and produce results with a relatively
high coecient of variation concerning the judgement
of specic features.
The objective methods provide quantied results of
tests performed regarding features of fabrics believed
to be related to the hand of textiles. Such quantied
results are in some cases quite far from the real perception of fabrics by humans. To verify those objective tests, scientists compare them with tests
performed with the participation of the group of
people, experts or na ve users or both. Such activity
allows verication of both sets of results, identication
of the divergences, and analysis of the source of these
divergences, their scale, and so on. It also creates the

1463
possibility for other developments in the area of hand
analysis.
Some studies have reported a good correlation
between subjective nger-pressure assessments of the
fabric softness and compression at low pressures.60
This study also conrms the uncertainty about the
words used to describe handle. Some descriptive
words appear to have multiple meanings. Softness
changes its meaning in relation to the fabric being handled. It is also believed that the selection of sets of
fabrics matters when the subjective analysis is to be
compared with objective analysis61 using objective measurements of compression.
The sensation of warmth or coolness to touch when
skin is brought into contact with a fabric is a transient
heat conduction phenomenon and contributes to the
perception of comfort of a garment. Skin brought
into contact with the surface of a garment is normally
at a higher temperature than the garment, and heat
ows away from the skin. It has been proved that the
coolness rating can be correlated with the thickness of
the external layer of the textiles (if there is a layerpackage).62
One of the general remarks presented in the studies
related to the smoothness, friction, and handle is that
even if, objectively, fabrics oer similar frictional resistance to motion and possess similar coecients of friction, subjectively, that is, tactually, these fabrics may be
dierent or similar.63
A summary of the relationships between sensory and
mechanical properties of fabrics was made in a wide
ranging review by Bishop.64 He applied a term fabric
objective measurement (FOM) while presenting subjective evaluations versus objective measurements. He
stated that the subjective evaluation of fabrics should
be based on psychophysical measurements of fabric
attributes that give reasonably consistent results from
one individual to another. Finally, he discussed the
Weber-Fechner law and Stevens power law to translate
instrumental measurements of fabric mechanical properties into corresponding hand parameters. The author
also presented a few scales/descriptor categories for
handle that have been adapted successfully to many
contemporary studies.64 One of the key issues mentioned in his work refers to skin interactions with perception of comfort in clothing. Interactions between
clothing and the body can be transferred to tactile perception of textile quality, which overlaps with the subjective evaluation of fabric handle. This raises an
interesting issue. It is believed that one can estimate
the handle subjective features based on subjective comfort evaluation, however, the most interesting issue is to
be able to predict subjective comfort evaluation having
handle subjective features or handle objective
parameters.

1464
Comfort aspects have been widely discussed in
another study65 in relation to the perception of
fabric hand. There is a fundamental dierence
between the perception of touch by wearing a garment
and by handling a fabric. Touch is passive in the case
of wearing the garment, the wearer does not move
intentionally to receive information concerning the
garment, which is collected through the skin surface.
Touch is active in the case of handling of the fabric.
The user moves the hand to obtain information concerning the fabric. Two other divisions of touch are
postulated. Firstly, Heller et al.66 refer to synthetic
touch, which is used to obtain an overall impression
by a resting hand and analytic touch, which is used to
obtain exhaustive information about the object being
touched. Secondly, Katz67 classies the active touch
into four classes: 1) gliding touch short motions to
obtain information about the surface; 2) sweeping
touch ngers check the general conditions and contours; 3) grasping global and complete touch but
also comparing the surfaces; 4) kinematic touch
comprehensive analysis of an object.

Alternative solution
According to the authors of this paper, to come closer
to an idealized system of measuring the hand of textiles,
the creation of an articial system that works like a
natural sense organ is required. In the case of the
hand of textiles this organ is the skin of the hand of
each person in which the perception system exists.
We propose an alternative solution to the existing,
non-ideal objective and subjective systems of hand

Textile Research Journal 82(14)

measurements. The idea is to create a model of the
ngertip skin section that possesses all mechanoreceptors to detect objects that are in contact with it. This
application of mechanical principles to biological systems such as humans, animals, plants, and organs is
called biomechanics. Mechanical deformation of hard
tissues (like wood, shell, and bone) may be analysed
with the theory of linear elasticity. On the other hand,
soft tissues (skin, tendon, and muscle) undergo large
deformations and thus their analysis relies on the
nite strain theory and computer simulations.68
We propose a biomechanical approach as a novelty
in the measurement and analysis of the hand of textiles.
The rationales for this approach are:
. a possibility of mimicking the skin sense organ with
a high precision;
. receiving immediate results (once the model is
already elaborated);
. a high accuracy and creditability (if the model is
well-established).
A large amount of studies regarding hand or human
skin modelling have been carried out. They are mainly
related to medical applications, for example prosthesis
creation, modelling of the ageing process of the skin,
collagen bre analysis, and neurological studies.
The creation of a three-dimensional model of the
human skin, by application of the nite element
method, to gain a deeper understanding of the human
sense of touch in reference to textiles is the new
approach.
Two cube-like solids are presented in Figure 1 and in
detail, showing a coarse meshed model of a ngertip

Figure 1. Finite element computation of the stress in meshed model of the fingertip skin section: (a) meshed without loading,
(b) meshed with a uniform distribution of loading of 1 N placed on the top of the section (authors own studies).

Ciesielska-Wrobel and Van Langenhove

skin section of 10 mm length  9 mm width  6 mm
height. The mechanical parameters of the skin which
were applied to this model are the Young modulus:
136 kPa for the epidermis, 80 kPa for the dermis, and
34 kPa for the hypodermis, and a Poissons ratio of 0.48
for all skin layers.69 A uniform distribution of 1 N loading was applied on the top of the skin section. So
the model was deformed, which can be observed in
Figure 1b.
It is believed that skin presents hyperelastic mechanical properties, however, neither non-linearity nor more
advanced stressstrain analysis of nodes has been
applied as the study is at a very early stage.
It has already been noticed that the highest deformation exists in the centre of the model.
Stress causing a deformation refers to the textile
object having contact with the skin of the ngertip.
Strain reects a deformation that has been done to
the skin by the textile. Basic stressstrain analysis
could answer the question of what kinds of textiles
have contact with the skin. There is a question of realism of the model. The more detailed the model, the
more accurate the results are, and consequently a
better estimation of textile features is possible. It is estimated that the presented model is far from reality at
this initial stage as it does not take into account a full
geometry of the ngertip skin section, for example ngerprint lines, curvature of the ngerpad skin, and equilibrium equations noted to all nodes playing the
role of mechanoreceptors in the model, with the
irregularity of distribution of these nodes reecting
mechanoreceptors.
This branch is relatively new for the analysis of the
relation between textiles and humans; however, it seems
to be extremely promising.

1465

Hand measurement techniques

On the basis of the literature review and the authors
own studies, a simplied division of hand measurement
techniques is presented (Figure 2). There are four
main techniques to quantify fabric hand: objective
techniques; subjective techniques; a combination of
objective and subjective techniques; and nally, mathematical and biomechanical modelling.
Due to obvious limitations, the authors could not
describe all aspects of the proposed division in detail.
It is believed that neurophysiological tests already
applied or potentially applied to textiles, gesture and
nger motion analysis, mathematical modelling and
virtual haptic perception could be analysed in further
reviews.
The neurological tests refer to neural response of
skin receptors.70 Receptors of the skin are stimulated
to evoke stimuli. They used to be analysed by devices
such as an electromagnetic instrument by von Frey.
This is a well known device developed in 1923 that
enabled one to apply tiny stimuli to the skin. It consisted of a series of brushes of dierent degrees of stiness which were xed with sealing wax to a moveable
rod. This instrument, was used to locate pain
points and to determine their threshold values.
Contemporary methodologies, e.g. functional magnetic
resonance imaging, can indicate the actual activity of
cortex71 to present sensorial reaction of the brain on
tactile signals from the ngertips.
An example of nger motion analysis for evaluation
of the hand is a glove-type system.72 Authors used it
together with pressure sensors to analyse nger motions
during the textile evaluation process. The sensors provided data concerning applied force and nger motion.

Figure 2. A simplified division of contemporary hand measurement techniques according to the literature review and the authors
own studies.

1466
The results proved the nger motion of experts is better
suited to sensory evaluation.
A great development of virtual techniques relates
also to textiles, especially visualization of fabrics for
purchase via the internet.73 Providing the sensation of
touch of digital textiles signicantly increases the realism and believability of the user experience. Tactile
characteristics of virtual textiles while interacting with
them via computer tools introduces a brand new way of
assessing the specic surface and material properties of
3-D objects representing real products.73 Tools like
this are not strongly popularized yet. A good example
of such product is a system developed by EST
Engineering Systems Technologies GmbH & Co.
KG.74 The SensAble Technologies PHANTOM product line of haptic devices developed by EST makes possible for users to touch and manipulate virtual objects.

Conclusions
1. There is a great diversity of contemporary techniques of objective hand measurements. Although
they present dierent approaches they basically
aim to analyse the same physical parameters of fabrics that are believed to be related to the so-called
hand of textiles. It appears that apart from improvement of the accuracy of measurement and precision
of instruments, no further meaningful advancement
can be made in relation to the physical features of
textiles and the appropriate features and attributes
of the hand of textiles, e.g. ring method test.36
2. Neither objective hand measurements nor subjective
hand measurements should be applied individually
to estimate the hand of textiles as it is necessary to
apply both approaches to achieve realistic results
with some errors. It is proposed that the best solution for the analysis of hand of textiles would be to
perform the objective techniques at the initial stage,
followed by the subjective techniques and analysis of
the model of skin in contact with dierent textiles.
3. Biomechanical modelling of the skin of the human
ngertip may help in objectication of perception,
which is believed to be non-objective. The best solution at that stage of scientic development is the
creation of systems that imitate the natural detection
systems that humans possess with the highest
possible accuracy. That should be combined with
objective and subjective analysis and supported by
them.
4. Modelling of the process of perception of textiles by
the skin lls the gap between two contemporary
existing solutions: objective and subjective. This
will help in the better understanding of the real process of perception of textiles as it is based on the real

Textile Research Journal 82(14)

physiological process of activation of mechanoreceptors in human skin by textiles.
5. The objective estimation of the hand of textiles is
reliable enough for most scientic analyses in most
cases; however it is still rather far from reality in
terms of the perception of textiles.
6. There is no compendium or guide concerning the
methodology of performing subjective estimation
of hand which proposes a good practice or at
least makes an attempt to organize the tests in
order to achieve more uniform results. The subjective estimation of hand performed organoleptically
should take into consideration the following:
. mass surface of compared samples should be the
same or as similar as possible (if the thickness of
the samples itself is not the study case);
. the expert panels should be composed of a greater
number of participants;
. the manner of presentation of samples should be
considered to present a group of samples or
pairs (the second task is easier for the assessor);
. due to possible inuence of skin roughness on
perception one should invite physical and nonphysical workers, if the assessment is performed
by na ve users of textiles;
. due to inuence of the menstrual cycle on haptic
perception one should avoid composing a panel
consisting of females only (unless the analysed
fabric or the course of the experiment requires
that);
. the fatigue caused by the test itself may inuence
the judgement;
. the manner of touching the sample, holding it
between ngers may give dierent impressions
to the assessors therefore it should be unied
during a single test for all assessors;
. a clear denition of terms used during the judgement of the fabric samples should be provided to
both experts and na ve users;
. the information provided to the na ve users of
textiles concerning the purpose of the test/experiment may impact their judgement of the samples;
. a visual contact with the samples may inuence
their judgement.
Funding
This work was funded by 7th European Framework, Marie
Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development 1st
Nov 201031st Oct 2012 Project Acronym CREATION
(grant number 253594).

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