| Appearance retention over the useful life of a carpet is a quality important to both the consumer and the carpet industry. The appearance of a carpet is inextricably bound to its surface texture, which is constantly modified by wear.; Historically, subjective methods have been employed for assessing texture change with wear, and therefore, assessment of carpet appearance. Results of such studies were necessarily limited by their own subjectivity. With the wide availability of computers and rapid advances in digital image processing techniques, there have been concurrent efforts to establish an objective system for carpet texture assessment through analysis of digitized images.; Computer-aided image analysis has the capacity to yield remarkably objective data. Even with computer-based systems, however, there is some potential for introducing external variables. Non-standard photographic input procedures or thoughtless application of image preprocessing techniques, for example, can affect data, but obstacles of this sort can be anticipated and controlled.; While many carpet texture studies have concerned products manufactured from synthetic fiber (nylon or polyester), this study focuses on carpets made of wool fibers. Selected first-order and second-order statistical analysis, including spatial co-occurrence matrices, surface roughness and fractal dimension, as well as flow-field analysis have been used to examine a small, but varied, set of wool carpets.; The project reported in this paper is based on work of a similar nature conducted in the Department of Textiles and Consumer Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. The preceding research is reviewed herein, noting techniques and results.; The consistency of results gained suggest that the techniques employed are useful, objective descriptors for both unmodified texture as well as for quantifying texture modification that occurs with wear. These results, in concert with those acquired in similar projects, enhance the ever-growing body of knowledge concerning texture analysis, in general, and carpet appearance retention evaluation in particular. |
