An Investigation of Cloth Bending

A set of postulates, called the remanent curvature hypothesis, is proposed to de scribe the behavior of cloth in creasing. The differential equations describing the behavior of a loop of fabric in loading and unloading are established and integrated for a range of values of a parameter which measures the susceptibility of a fabric to retain a crease or wrinkle. The loading and unloading curves so obtained are compared with experimental results. Up to loads of 4 kg, the geometric similarity predicted by the theory is maintained, although the shape of the experimental unloading curves differs from the theoretical curves at low loads.