High sensitivity measurements of thermal properties of textile fabrics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel apparatus and protocol for highly sensitive measurement of textile fabrics' thermal properties, enabling precise analysis of dry and wet fabrics to improve thermal comfort optimization.

Contribution

It presents a new measurement apparatus and the ThermoTex protocol, aligning with standards, for accurate thermal property assessment of fabrics from polymeric materials.

Findings

Effective detection of differences between dry and wet fabrics

High accuracy in measuring thermal conductivity, resistance, absorption, and diffusivity

Potential for developing predictive models of fabric thermal behavior

Abstract

A new testing apparatus is proposed to measure the thermal properties of fabrics made from polymeric materials. The calibration of the apparatus and the data acquisition procedure are considered in detail in order to measure thermal conductivity, resistance, absorption and diffusivity constants of the tested fabric samples. Differences between dry and wet fabrics have been carefully detected and analyzed. We have developed a new measurement protocol, the "ThermoTex" protocol, which agrees with the UNI EN 31092 standard and entails an accurate quantification of the experimental errors according to a standard statistical analysis, thus allowing a rigorous investigation of the physical behavior of the phenomena involved. As a consequence, our machinery exhibits great potentialities for optimizing the thermal comfort of fabrics, according to the market demand, thanks to the possible development of a predictive phenomenological theory of the effects involved.