The damage that can occur in certain fibrous raw materials or in textiles during their production and storage of textiles is expertly described in this book by Karl Mahall. In particular, he explains methods for finding concealed textile defects by using microscopic analysis.Besides minor improvements and corrections, the new edition contains a new chapter "Poultry Feathers as Filling Material for Bedding and Textiles - Analysis of Faults." The reason for its inclusion is that natural feathers and down are not only used as a filling material for bedding but also for garments, such as anoraks, coats and sleeping bags.This book is especially useful as a manual for both chemical and textile engineers and quality engineers. It is also a useful reference for others in the textile industry in general.

Assessing the quality of textiles using textile microscopy remains one of the important instruments for permanent process improvement in the fiber, textile and apparel industries. The degree of international interlinking in the textile producing and finishing industries and their markets demands dearly defined and reproducible methods of detecting damage or defects at all process stages. This book -Quality Assessment of Textiles -Damage Detection by Microsco- py - has in the meantime established itself so well as "the Mahall" in research institute laboratories investigating defects, in universities and colleges, in the training of textile chemists and technologists, and in the industry and the retail trade, that it has become necessary to bring out a new edition. This edition has been revised and supplemented by Mr. Mahall and his succes- sor Ms. Irmhild Goebel and her staff. Cognis, as the successor organization continuing the textile business of the for- mer Textile Technology department of Henkel, is pleased to make this new edi- tion available to specialists, to students and to any other interested readers. June 2002 Dr. U. Kloubert (Cognis Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG) Prof E. Finnimore (Fachhochschule Hof, Germany) Foreword to the First Edition Quality is the decisive criterion by which textile industry is measured in the international competition. Today this is particularly true.