The formation mechanism of “skin-tactile” coating and its application and trends in furniture

FENG Xinhao;CHEN Jingyu;WU Zhihui;WU Yan;GAN Jian;College of Furnishings and Industrial Design, Nanjing Forestry University;

skin-tactile coating;;skin-tactile furniture;;formation mechanism;;tactile evaluation

With the continuous progress in science, technology, and national living standard, people are looking for high quality and smart furniture resulting in higher requirement for household products nowdays. Therefore, more and more household products with intelligent characters have sprung up in our daily life, such as skin-tactile furniture. Skin-tactile furniture is a new emerged furniture that is decorated by a layer of specific coating or film. The skin-tactile furniture can not only create a comfortable and quiet living environment, but also provide people with a warm and pleasant feeling when it is interacted with the human body. Therefore, the skin-tactile furniture meets people's emotional needs. In this review, the overview of skin-tactile was addressed based on the basic concept, molding features and applications in cosmetics, fabrics, furniture and other fields. The influence on the forming mechanism of skin-tactile coating was discussed from the aspects of inside and outside of the skin-tactile coating. The forming principles of the skin-tactile coating by imprinting, stress releasing, thermal stress, swelling, and phase separation were elaborated, respectively. Furthermore, the formation and evaluation of the skin-tactile furniture were introduced. The methods of forming the skin-tactile coating on the furniture were briefly summarized, and their advantages and disadvantages were listed and discussed. An effective method to accurately evaluate the skin-tactile performance of furniture was proposed by the combination of objective and subjective evaluations, which were based on the summarization of the handle evaluation of fabrics and solid wood. Finally, the application of the skin-tactile furniture was analyzed, and its development trend in the research and development, production, and evaluation were put forward. Especially, the application of 3 D printing technology in the manufacturing of the skin-tactile furniture would promote the controllable, accurate, and rapid molding of the skin-tactile coating on the furniture. Based on the comprehensive analysis of the formation mechanism of skin-tactile coating, and the forming, evaluation, application and development trend of skin-tactile furniture, this study would provide valuable techniques to manufacture skin-tactile coatings on the furniture. Moreover, this review would lay a solid foundation for the wide application of skin-tactile furniture in the future.