Intelligent Recognition of Texture and Material Properties of Fabrics

Fabrics are unique materials which consist of various properties affecting their performance and end-uses. A computerized fabric property evaluation and analysis method plays a crucial role not only in textile industry but also in scientific research. An accurate analysis and measurement of fabric property provides a powerful tool for gauging product quality, assuring regulatory compliance and assessing the performance of textile materials.;Secondly, we present a methodology for using the high resolution 3D surface data of fabric samples to measure surface roughness in a nondestructive and accurate way. A parameter FD_FFT, which is the fractal dimension estimation from 2DFFT of 3D surface scan, is proposed as the indicator of surface roughness. The robustness ofFD_FFT, which consists of the rotation-invariance and scale-invariance, is validated on a number of computer simulated fractal Brownian images. Secondly, in order to evaluate the usefulness ofFD_FFT, a novel method of calculating standard roughness parameters from 3D surface scan is introduced. According to the test results,FD_FFT has been demonstrated as a fast and reliable parameter for measuring the fabric roughness from 3D surface data. We attempt a neural network model using back propagation algorithm andFD_FFT for predicting the standard roughness parameters. The proposed neural network model shows good performance experimentally.;Finally, an intelligent approach for the interpretation of fabric objective measurements is proposed using supported vector machine (SVM) techniques. The human expert assessments of fabric samples are used during the training phase in order to adjust the general system into an applicable model. Since the target output of the system is clear, the uncertainty which lies in current subjective fabric evaluation does not affect the performance of proposed model. The support vector machine is one of the best solutions for handling high dimensional data classification. The complexity problem of the fabric property has been optimally dealt with. The generalization ability shown in SVM allows the user to separately implement and design the components. Sufficient cross-validations are performed and demonstrate the performance test of the system.;This thesis investigated the solutions for applying computerized methods to evaluate and intelligently interpret the texture and material properties of fabric in an inexpensive and efficient way. Firstly, a method which allows automatic recognition of basic weave pattern and precisely measuring the yarn count is proposed. The yarn crossed-areas are segmented by a spatial domain integral projection approach. Combining fuzzy c-means (FCM) and principal component analysis (PCA) on grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) feature vectors extracted from the segments enables to classify detected segments into two clusters. Based on the analysis on texture orientation features, the yarn crossed-area states are automatically determined. An autocorrelation method is used to find weave repeats and correct detection errors. The method was validated by using computer simulated woven samples and real woven fabric images. The test samples have various yarn counts, appearance, and weave types. All weave patterns of tested fabric samples are successfully recognized and computed yarn counts are consistent to the manual counts.