Articles

The tensile strength is an imperative properties and essential indications consumers’ look out for in purchasing a quality fabric. The objective of this study was to examine key soap on tensile strength in three washing cycles of selected Printex fabrics in Ghana. Quantitatively, the study adopted both experimental and factorial research designs. Materials for the study consisted of three fabrics with black prints and white as base colour were purchased from the market. These three fabrics had the same designs but two had different fabric finishes and the third one had no finish (plain, embossed and plisse). Six yards each of the Printex black and white fabrics with embossed, plisse and a third one which did not have any special fabric finish were used for the study. Key soap purchased from the Ghanaian market, and standard soap from Ghana Standard Authority was used for the study. Purposive and simple random techniques were used to select materials for the study. The main research instrument for the testing tensile strength was Universal tensile testing machine. Data were analysed with both descriptive and inferential statistics. The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis formulated to guide the study. The study revealed that continuous washing had degrading effects on the tensile strength. The implication is that continuous washing weakens the internal strengths of fabrics which cause them to fail or weakens their resistance to stress test. The study also found that continuous washing had degrading effects on the tensile strength of the selected fabrics. It is recommended that the Ghana Standards Authority should encourage soap producers to get their chemical compositions as close to those of the standardised soap as possible.