The main content dealt with in this paper was to present an objective method to evaluate the plantar press-comfort performance of warp-knitted spacer fabrics. It aimed to explain the plantar press-comfort performance of spacer fabric by the compression property and structure parameters of spacer fabric. The compression indexes (compression work, recovery work, hysteresis work and maximum compression force) and structure parameters (diameter and thickness) were utilized to classify the plantar press-comfort performance of warp-knitted spacer fabrics by regression analysis and the K-means cluster method. In order to verify the validity, subjective judgments were also made and compared with the objective K-means cluster method. The experimental results showed that a good correlation existed between the subjective judgment method and objective cluster method. This demonstrates that the compression indexes featured, from spherical compression force–displacement curves and structure parameters, can be utilized to characterize the plantar press-comfort performance of warp-knitted spacer fabrics and is effective in obtaining the fabric evaluation score of plantar press-comfort performance.
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