Effect of a novel press washing mode on appearance and mechanical properties of silk garments: comparison with hand washing and front-loading machine washing

Abstract

Silk garments with its unique luster, softness and glamour has always occupied an important position in the fashion market. However, such fabrics present difficulties in daily care and tend to deteriorate in visual perception after laundering. Panasonic in 2021 has therefore launched a novel washing mode characterized by up-and-down soft pressure and vacuum dehydration to address the mechanical damage of common household washing methods to the silk garments. In this study, the effect of the press washing mode on the appearance and mechanical properties of silk garments based on common household laundering scenarios was investigated by comparing with hand washing, gentle machine washing and normal machine washing. The experimental results demonstrated that press washing had the best performance in terms of appearance indicators and elastic recovery, especially in the case of repeated laundering, due to the minimum fiber damage and surface degradation during washing. The laundered samples were also subjected to sensory evaluation by taking into account the personal feelings of consumers, which further verified the instrumental test results to a certain extent. The results obtained in this study can provide scientific care guidance and optimization ideas for subsequent research and applications.

Keywords:

• Silk garment
• press washing
• appearance property
• mechanical property
• instrumental test
• sensory evaluation

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

The paper was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2232022 G-08).