Woven silk fabrics have long been regarded as high quality value-added textile materials because of their elegant appearance and soft hand. The cross-sections of the silk fibers vary in shape and size even if the common shape is trilobal in general. T...
Woven silk fabrics have long been regarded as high quality value-added textile materials because of their elegant appearance and soft hand. The cross-sections of the silk fibers vary in shape and size even if the common shape is trilobal in general. The pleasing appearance and hand of the silk fabrics have been attributed to the natural irregularity of silk fibers having longitudinal micro-scale crimps and randomly twisted or distorted ridges.
The luster, one of the appearance characteristics, has been measured using the glossmeter methods for plastics sheets or painted surfaces. Since the textile surfaces are not as flat as the sheets, they impose difficulties to identify the luster characteristics. With the introduction of image acquisition and analysis methods to the textile sectors, various attempts have been made to delve into the characterization of the luster quality of the textile fabrics on top of the traditional luster quantity that has been successful with the traditional glossmeter methods.
In this study, silk fabric specimens were degummed for 5 and 30 minutes to compare with commercial counterpart. Luster objects, or blobs, on the fabric images were analyzed via the image analysis software after required image processing. Together with the image analysis of the luster, an attempt was made to build a partial three-dimensional model of the silk fiber with random twist and micro-crimp. The number of blobs and the size distribution of the blobs in the fabric images could provide some quantitative explanation of the elegant luster of the silk fabrics.