Prediction of wool knitwear pilling propensity using support vector machines

The propensity of wool knitwear to form entangled fiber balls, known as pills, on the surface is affected by a large number of factors. This study examines, for the first time, the application of the support vector machine (SVM) data mining tool to the pilling propensity prediction of wool knitwear. The results indicate that by using the binary classification method and the radial basis function (RBF) kernel function, the SVM is able to give high pilling propensity prediction accuracy for wool knitwear without data over-fitting. The study also found that the number of records available for each pill rating greatly affects the learning and prediction capability of SVM models.