Fabric Drape Definition

Fabric drape refers to the performance of fabric draping due to its own gravity. The drape of the fabric is one of the important contents of fabric’s visual form and aesthetic comfort. Draping reflects the drape degree and drape shape of the fabric, and it is an important factor to determine the visual beauty of the fabric. The drape of different fabrics is quite different, such as the poor drape of Poe knit fabrics and the very good drape of curtains. We should use the fabric drape testing machine to select suitable drape fabrics.

Drape Test Principle

Place the circular specimen in the circular supporting disk, irradiate the sample with a parallel light perpendicular to the horizontal plane, and then we obtain the projection diagram of the sample. Calculate the percentage of the projection area to the original area by using the image processing method.

Drape Index

How to drape fabric? Drape shape, drape degree and drape coefficient F are three common indexes of fabric drape.

Drape shape refers to the number and the size of twists in fabric drape. The drape degree refers to the droop degree that the free boundary of the fabric. The drape coefficient F refers to the percentage of the projected area to the original area of the drooping part of the fabric. The smaller the drape coefficient, the better the drape.

Sample Preparation

1 Humidity under the standard atmosphere.

2 Selection of sample diameter:

When the diameter of the clamping disc is 12cm, the diameter of all samples is 24 cm.

When the diameter of the clamping disc is 18cm, test the specimen with 30cm diameter first, and calculate the drape coefficient.

If the drape coefficient is less than 30%, test the sample with 24cm diameter, if the drape coefficient is more than 30% and less than 85%, test the sample with 30cm diameter, if the drape coefficient is greater than 85%, test the sample with 36cm diameter.

Take at least 3 samples for each sample, and test each sample both positive and negative sides.

What is Drape Testing?

Fabric drape tester is also called drape testing instrument, which is used to test the drape coefficient of a material. In the drape meter test, there are several factors affecting the drape of fabric such as weight, stiffness, thickness, rigidity, etc. And the drape of different fabrics is different. So how to calculate fabric for drapes? Here are two drape coefficient formulas for your reference: