Abstract

The comfort property of fabrics is becoming increasingly important as customers desire heat and moisture management-enabled clothing that match their physical activity levels and environmental factors. So far, little work has been reported with the objective of engineering comfort in fabrics and exploring the potential of ‘engineered comfort’ for value-addition. To develop textiles that meet this objective, predictive models of thermal absorptivity, thermal resistance, water-vapour resistance and air permeability of 100% cotton single-layer plain woven fabric were developed in this work, respectively. The effects of the fabric structural parameters, namely, the open area, relative contact area between the fabric and the skin, the areal density and thickness on the comfort parameters were studied. All the predictive models developed were implemented into a computer program on Visual C++. The software is expected to be implemented as a tool that will enable textile technologists to determine the optimum fabric construction parameters for different permutations of thermo-physiological comfort parameters and thermal contact feelings; for instance, high thermal insulation coupled with cool contact feeling or high water-vapour permeability with warm thermal contact effect. The yarn sett and yarn linear density of a given plain woven fabric are the only inputs required for running the ready-to-implement program. The output of the program was validated by comparing with experimental data generated on Alambeta, Permetest and FX 3300 air permeability tester equipment, respectively. Most of the fabric samples generated values of Thermal Absorptivity, Thermal Resistance and Water-Vapour Resistance with acceptable relative errors of less than 25%. In addition, the program reasonably predicted the trend in changes in Air Permeability with changes in fabric construction.

摘要

随着客户渴望能够与他们的身体活动水平和环境因素相匹配的热量和水分管理功能的服装，织物的舒适性变得越来越重要。到目前为止，关于织物设计舒适度和探索“工程舒适度”增值潜力的工作报道很少。为了开发满足这一目标的纺织品，本工作分别开发了 100% 棉单层平纹织物的热吸收率、耐热性、耐水蒸汽性和透气性的预测模型。研究了织物结构参数，即开口面积、织物与皮肤的相对接触面积、面密度和厚度对舒适性参数的影响。开发的所有预测模型都在 Visual C++ 上实现到计算机程序中。该软件预计将作为一种工具来实施，使纺织技术人员能够针对热生理舒适参数和热接触感觉的不同排列确定最佳织物构造参数；例如，高隔热性加上凉爽的接触感或高水蒸气渗透性和温暖的热接触效果。给定平纹织物的纱线定距和纱线线密度是运行准备实施程序所需的唯一输入。通过分别与 Alambeta、Permetest 和 FX 3300 透气性测试仪设备上生成的实验数据进行比较，验证了程序的输出。大多数织物样品产生的热吸收率值，耐热性和耐水蒸气性，可接受的相对误差小于 25%。此外，程序合理预测了透气度随织物结构变化的变化趋势。