A Newly-Developed Tactile Sensor and Its Application to the Evaluation of Cosmetics

Some of the viscoelastic properties of cosmetics (mainly creams and milk lotions) are supposed to have close relationship with sensory evaluation terms such as smoothness, richness and feeling of film thickness, etc. A new instrument equipped with a newly-developed tactile sensor was designed and introduced in order to measure viscoelasticity and the film thickness of cosmetics under the high shear-rate condition. 2 types of milk lotions which have different results of sensory evaluation were measured by the instrument. The results obtained from the instrument were found to correspond to some of the sensory evaluation results and the idea of measuring viscoelasticity and the film thickness of cosmetics under the high shear-rate condition was proved to be effective.