Editorial

Citation

Stylios, G.K. (2009), "Editorial", International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 21 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijcst.2009.05821eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Volume 21, Issue 5

On Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 May, the first world conference on software for the textile and clothing industries was organised by the University of Manchester, TechniTex Faraday Ltd, Nanjing University of Science and Technology and TexEng Software Ltd.

The session was run jointly under the much wider in subjects and already established 2nd International Conference on Information and Computer Science (ICI2009) and the 2nd International Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ICMS2009). The conference was well managed, had about 100 participants from 13 countries and 33 papers, some of which I will try to highlight.

I decided to participate in the conference myself, despite the fact that I was a little concerned with the chosen theme: “Software for the textile and clothing industries,” which gives you the impression of a kind of trade show rather than a research conference. There are good software programs but maybe without substance, in most cases it is what is behind the software that is more important, i.e. the mathematics; in this case the models and that is what the first day of the conference was all about. Consequently, let us think in terms of how software can model textile materials and processes, which is also synonymous to the overall conference theme.

Amongst all papers the dinner presentation paper of John Hearle, who looked as young as ever, made the conference richer and not surprisingly impressed me the most. John being also the Conference Chairman delivered his talk with a title “Impressions from a career on the hard shoulder of textile software.” It was an account of landmarks of his illustrious career in modelling textiles with his students that had together build the foundations of this field of research. During his talk, what caught my attention was a slide of his which showed Konopasek working on a PDP 10 computer terminal, in which his pioneering knitted loop modelling work can be seen (shown on screen, Figure 1). Of course, UMIST and our community lost Milos Konopasek when he went to Georgia, then to North Carolina to end up out of the textile world and into the commercial business, setting up TK SOLVER in 1983, then LOTUS and UTS in 1985; all extremely successful software packages used until nowadays and Konopasek a successful businessman. John had brought him to the UK and had arranged for him a worthy PhD on this topic, and the tale is that the viva with Grosberg as external examiner lasted a mere handshake in which Grosberg said “Congratulations Dr Konopasek I have been thinking along the same lines as you” (Figure 2).

Figure 1 PDP 10 CPU

Figure 2

In the first day (20 May), 17 papers were delivered spanning modelling from yarns through to fabrics and garments. Geometrical, mechanical, 3D and process modelling software-based papers dominated the session, with the highlight of a flagship government-funded project (£1.9 million) on “Modelling and simulation of high performance textiles,” in which Manchester (Podluri), Nottingham (Long) and Heriot-Watt (Stylios) collaborate between them and with nine companies in which yarn, fabric and garment modelling efforts are being integrated to produce realistic solutions to predicting high performance. Day two (22 May) delivered 16 papers focussing on business and design software. A total of five papers were delivered by commercial companies and topics in body modelling, pattern making and lay planning dominated the day.

Figure 3 IBM's BLADE Hardware System at RIfleX, Heriot-Watt University

Although, it is difficult to talk about anything in science and technology these days without using computers and software, either written or applied, the first day of the conference in particular has shown how software can help the mathematics by being able to offer computational possibilities that Milos Konopasek pioneered in the early 1960s and thus showing us the way forward in textile modelling. In the 1960s, Konopasek used a PDP 10 researching the same theme, nowadays and 50 years later the latest research on the same subject done at Heriot-Watt University by my team use bespoke IBM's new BLADE computer 100,000 times faster than the PDP 10 computer that Konopasek used in the early 1960s (Figure 3).

George K. StyliosEditor-in-Chief