Abstract
The main function of an apparel product or of various clothing structures is to maintain the temperature of the human body at a constant level. In order to attain this objective, clothing products must be able to allow thermal, water vapour and air transfer, depending on certain environmental factors and on body states (in times of effort, of rest, and so on). Thus, the next step taken would be to scientifically design the clothing product. To this purpose, one needs to anticipate the optimal degree of comfort when wearing that particular apparel product, which can be done by determining the values of the comfort parameters and choosing the best possible one. Determining the values corresponding to the three main comfort parameters taken into consideration (thermal insulation, air and vapour permeability) requires some calculus algorithms that would take considerable time to apply. This paper suggests the use of a software application in order to save time when calculating the above mentioned values. Firstly, one has to be aware of the end use of that particular apparel product. Secondly, one must be able to select the potential textile materials that will be used when manufacturing the product in a correct and scientific manner. Therefore, we consider as input some experimentally determined values, such as: the thermal conductivity coefficient, material thickness, the vaporization coefficient, and the air permeability coefficient. The output comprises: thermal resistance, vapour and air diffusion resistance.
If the values obtained for the established comfort indicators are within the previous imposed limits, according to the end use, the tested textile fabrics will be marked as valid and the software will determine the optimal one; this is obtained by minimizing the squared difference between the experimental values and the compulsory ones. The above method leads to an objective evaluation of the optimal variants that are to be considered when manufacturing the product. If the obtained values do not fit within the imposed limits, the fabric will be marked as invalid; the process will be stopped and the user will be notified and instructed to choose another one and restart the whole assessment process.
The application will give a score to each valid fabric chosen for the final comparison, thus highlighting the optimal one. In order to provide the user with an easier way to interpret the outputs, the obtained results will be expressed in points. |
Keywords
software application, comfort characteristics, thermal resistance, resistance to air flow, water vapour diffusion resistance, optimization |