Hair breakage during combing. I. Pathways of breakage.

Hair breakage during combing was evaluated by combing tresses and examining photographs of snags of hair fibers in combs. The resultant hair fiber arrangements suggest that breakage likely involves hair-on-hair interactions, and broken fragment size suggests that breakage occurs primarily at or near the hair-comb interface. Compression forces during combing were also measured, and impact loading of a hair fiber over another hair versus a hair fiber over a comb tooth shows that compression and abrasion are important to breakage during combing and that impact loading of one hair fiber over another during snagging is a probable and important pathway for hair breakage.