engleski

The application of the KES system in objective measurement of sailcloth quality parameters

The offer of fabric appropriate for sailcloth manufacture, thanks to the rapid development of new fabrics and methods of their manufacture, considerably surpasses the ability of sailcloth-manufacturers to grade successfully their quality and usability. Thus it often happens that, even when HP fibres and contemporary constructions and technical solutions are used in sailcloth manufacture, the end product exhibits unexpectedly low level of usability, resulting in dissatisfied end-users. Six basic groups of properties have been defined, based on customer requirements and familiarity with testing methodology and possibilities of fabric characterisation, adequate to describe objectively quality and usability of any particular fabric. Within each group (parameter block), individual quality indicators have been defined (337 of them), to be used to describe objectively any fabric intended for sailcloth manufacture. Most of them can be measured using known standardised methods and testing procedures, or calculated from characteristic functional dependence. However, specific properties of contemporary sailcloth fabrics have given rise to the need to modify some testing procedures, to match the peculiarities of the fabrics. The paper presents the results of investigating the application of the Kawabata Evaluation System (KES-FB) in objective measurement of sailcloth fabric quality. Besides conventional and established procedures for measuring individual quality parameters on the system, measuring potential for the above materials has been broadened by selecting different levels of sensitivity for individual measuring devices within the system and/or by changing the sample dimensions. The possibility of such modifications, as well as the ability to measure extremely small variations of the parameter to be tested, makes the KES system a valuable instrument for objective evaluation of sailcloth fabrics.

KES system; objective measurement; sailcloth; quality assessment

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