Improvement of the standard method for assessing colour fastness to wet rubbing

• Published in: Coloration technology Vol. 131; no. 5; pp. 403 - 411
• Main Author: Suganuma, Keiko
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.10.2015
• ISSN: 1472-3581; 1478-4408
• DOI: 10.1111/cote.12170

Colour fastness to rubbing is evaluated by the degree of staining of a standard adjacent cotton cloth. However, some kinds of dye usually stain other textiles to a greater extent than cotton under wet conditions. In this work, rubbing fastness tests were carried out with various kinds of adjacent cloth in order to examine the factors affecting the wet rubbing fastness, and a more practical evaluation method using adjacent rubbing cloth was proposed. Dye transfer from the dyed fabric to the adjacent cloth depended on the affinity of the dyes for the fibre material of the dyed fabric and the adjacent cloth under wet conditions, in addition to the friction coefficient between the fabrics. A standard adjacent cloth should have a high staining property. The nylon staple cloth is preferred for fabrics dyed with vat, disperse, and acid dyes because it receives the most dye from rubbing with them.