Study on Wicking Measurement in Thin Layer Textiles by Processing Digital Images

The purpose of this work is to assess and develop experimental techniques that allowwicking measurement over a wide range of textiles. Various kinds of fabrics, nonwoven layers and anelectro spinning nylon layer were used as the test materials. A syringe is used to drop a 0.02 g spot ofdistilled water on the sample and a digital camera to take pictures simultaneously. When the wickingprocess stops, the images are processed and the increase in wicking area is measured using Matlab 7.4and a set of image processing tools. It is shown that the newly developed technique is able to test thewicking behavior of various kinds of textiles with different thickness.