Investigation of the effect of fabric physical parameters on its objective and subjective drape

The drape of fabric is one of the features that influence the aesthetics and comfort of clothing. In this study, the effect of important physical fabric parameters, including weight, thickness, density, bending length (in longitudinal, transverse and oblique directions) in 26 different woven (with plain, twill, and satin weaves) and knitted fabrics on their drape coefficient was investigated. The drape coefficient was evaluated by both objective (by performing the Cusick test) and subjective (ranking by 5 judges) methods. Then, by Nonlinear multivariate regression analysis, it was determined that the most effective factors in predicting the drape coefficient of the fabrics are its bending length in both longitudinal and transverse directions. According to the relationship developed for predicting the drape coefficient based on the two mentioned factors and calculating the error percentage, it was found that the correlation coefficient between the experimental and the predicted results was 0.90 and the error values ranged from 0.25 to 5.42% with an average of 1.39%, which indicates a good agreement between the model results and the results of the Cusick method. In addition, from comparing the ranking of fabrics based on the model results and the subjective evaluation results, it was found that the rank of 15 fabric samples is the same in both methods and the difference is limited to one rank in other samples.