Prediction of clothing sensory comfort using neural networks and fuzzy logic

The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of human psychological perception of clothing related sensations and comfort to develop intellectual understanding and methodology to predict clothing comfort performance from fabric physical properties. The framework for this study is to establish theoretical understanding of human sensory perception process, from fabric physical properties to individual sensory perceptions, and then to overall clothing comfort perception.; The relationships between individual sensory perceptions and overall comfort perception during exercise are studied by wear trials and model development. factors, which are related to moisture comfort, tactile comfort and thermal-fit comfort by using statistical factor analysis. Mathematical models are developed on the basis of assumption of linear relationship between the sensory factors and overall clothing comfort. Further, feed-forward backpropagation neural networks and fuzzy logic models are developed to predict overall clothing comfort from individual sensory perceptions. Good correlations are found between predicted and experimental comfort rating with all three models.; The relationships between subjective perceptions and objectively measured clothing pressure at nine different body locations are studied. It is found that objectively measured pressure values are significantly different amongst different garments and postures. On the other hand, garment has a significant influence on subjective pressure comfort ratings. Clothing pressures and pressure comfort perceptions are not uniformly distributed at different body locations. Therefore, skin pressure sensitivity index is derived. Dynamic garment pressure distribution in tight-fit sportswear is simulated by using computational biomechanical models. Again it is found that clothing pressure distribution is not uniformly distributed and high-pressure zone is concentrated around the waist girth at the end of the wearing process. The predicted pressures are consistent with the experimental pressure measurements.; To summarise, the three key elements in the prediction of psychological perception of clothing comfort from fabric physical properties are: data reduction and summation, self-learning capability and fuzzy reasoning. This thesis shows that the model, which integrates these three elements, can generate the best predictions comparing with other hybrid models. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...