Acoustic Investigation of Textile Fabrics

<jats:p>Why is it possible to distinguish between different textile fabrics by just touching them and moving your hand over them and listening to the sound? Particularly for high-quality woven fabrics, e.g. used for tailor-made suits, it is quite common that the dressmaker listens to the sound as their hand rubs the fabric. Can this approach be translated into a technical measurement? What could a sound analysis tell us about the fabric properties? As a first simple approach, we used a record player to rotate different cotton fabrics, and tested fine tips from diverse materials, such as plastic pipettes, pens, glass tips, etc. Our results show clear differences between the textile fabrics, which can be attributed to different yarn, knitted or woven structures. While the rotational mode of investigation impedes fully automated fast Fourier transform (FFT) evaluations, our first results suggest de¬veloping this promising method further.</jats:p>