The ability to pass a brush or comb through hair with minimal snagging, tangling or friction is key to consumer perception of hair condition.  If you want to know how well your products condition the hair and reduce dry or wet grooming forces, then you may want to consider performing ease-of-combing experiments.  These tests correlate to a wide variety of consumer attributes (softness, smoothness, moisturization, etc), and, when performed on damaged hair, they can be used to investigate damage repair.

An Instron tensile tester measures frictional forces as a hair tress is pulled through a comb at a controlled rate.  Combing experiments are performed in the wet or dry state, after treatment.  The Instron is used to measure several parameters: peak combing force, also known as ‘maximum load’, combing energy and average combing force.  Tresses are usually combed several times to obtain accurate measurements.

Hair combing studies are sensitive to the levels of hair curl and underlying hair damage, and are prone to high levels of variability.  Experts at TRI can advise on the best protocols for your study.