Human subjective response to aluminum coating surfaces

Abstract

The research described in this study establishes whether measured physical material parameters could be used as a predictor of the human subjective response to the tactile and visual stimuli characteristics of aluminium coatings surfaces. Twenty surfaces were used consisting of four uncoated aluminium substrates and four different type of coatings applied on each of the four uncoated substrates. Forty volunteers (20 female and 20 males) were asked to rate the surfaces using semantic differential scales.The results suggest that coatings obtained by matt polyurethane which contains a fine dispersion of silica micro-particles has the capability to veil the effect of the manufacturing process of the aluminium substrates on both the felt slipperiness and felt roughness. The dynamic coefficient of friction was found to be a good predictor of the felt slipperiness with a negative power law exponent of 0.86 (R 2 = 0.85), confirming that greater friction is associated with less felt slipperiness. The physical gloss was also found highly negatively correlated (R 2 = 0.87) with the felt slipperiness of the tactile stimuli suggesting that glossier surfaces could be mostly perceived sticky. These results provide useful suggestions relating to the sensory perception and experience of materials, helpful for the industrial and product design in numerous application fields such as automotive and electronics industry.

Surface Texture Detection With a New Sub-mm Resolution Flexible Tactile Capacitive Sensor Array for Multimodal Artificial Finger

“…provide a certain feeling to touch, which requires an iterative exercise including design, fabrication and focus group testing and appraisal [2], [3]. In an effort to virtualize the design and evaluation of new car interiors, a multimodal artificial finger is being developed to mimic human touch perception to textures.…”