The newly developed water absorbent fibers are hollow fibers based on the polyester polymer. The side face of fibers is covered by a lot of micro voids passing to the hollow. Water is absorbed in the hollow through the micro voids by capillary migration. The fibers are water absorbent equivalent to cotton fibers. They are featured by quick drying, less change in bending rigidity and compressive characteristics and less stickiness to the human skin under the wet condition. Wearing tests by using shirts and slacks in the hot and humid atmosphere have shown that the garments of the water absorbent fibers are less sticky and less cool to the human skin. They also quickly recover their feeling from stickiness and coolness. It is confirmed that the water absorbent polyester fiber shows the higher wear comfort than regular polyester or cotton fibers.

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This study aims at investigating experimentally frictional properties of pile fabrics by changing such factors as sliding speeds of a frictional slider, relative humidity, twist numbers of a pile warp yarns and fricttonal directions. The results are as follows.
(1) The frictional force is influenced by the sliding speed of a frictional slider.
(2) As it is found that the frictional force is influenced by relative humidity, such assumption is made as F(H)=f_AY•A(H)+b•W(H) where f_AY and b are constants, H being relative humidity. There was found a good agreement between experimental values and calculated values.
(3) The frictinal force increases as the twist number of pile warp yarns decreases.
(4) The frictional coefficient (μ_a) obtained by sliding against inclined piles is higher than that (μ_w) obtained by sliding along inclined piles.

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