A Study On The Wet Comfort Of Women's Corsets

By carrying out instrumental tests on the fabric properties and subjective wear trials, the wet comfort of women's corsets was studied in this dissertation. The study includes four parts.In part 1, the present state of female underwear market was discussed and the literatures relevant to underwear were reviewed.In part 2, the concepts relevant to clothing comfort and the mechanism of clothing wet comfort were summarized. The literatures on fabric and clothing wet comfort were reviewed.In part 3, the properties of the fabrics commercially used in production of women's corsets were tested instrumentally and the results were analyzed. Totally fifteen commercially available fabrics were chosen. The fabric structure parameters such as thickness, weight per unit area and fabric cover factor were tested. The fabric properties such as moisture transfer property, air permeability and wicking effect, which are relevant to wet comfort, were tested. The results were analyzed using several statistical methods. By carrying out correlation analysis, it was found that, at the significance level α =0.01 there was a significantnegative correlation between the fabric permeability and fabric cover factor. It was also found that there was a negative correlation between the fabric permeability and the weight per unit area and fabric thickness, respectively. Besides, there was a strong correlation between the fabric air permeability and drying rate. The results of ANOVA analysis showed that there was no notable difference between the moisture transfer property of the fabric and the composite of fabric and gauze, while the composite with the sponge greatly hindered the moisture transfer property. By carrying out cluster analysis, it was found that the 15 fabrics can be divided into 3 groups, fabrics 1 and 2 were in the same group, having high wicking effect and poor air permeability and drying rate;fabrics 6 and 7 were in the same group, having good air permeability and drying rate, and the other fabrics were in another group.In part 4, wear trials were carried out and the results were analyzed. Five fabrics were chosen from the above fifteen fabrics and were made into corsets, which had same style and same size. Wear trials were carried out at the environmental conditions 25°C,65%RH and the wind velocity less than 0.1 m/s and the subjects were at rest and running, respectively. It was found that the wet comfort of the corsets reduced after running, it mainly because the mugginess and stickiness of the corsets increased after running. Corsets 4 and 5 generally showed good wet comfort. This is accordant with the instrumental tests results of the fabrics. The resultsof ANOVA analysis showed that there were significant differences among the wet comfort of the corsets through the resting and running periods, while the significance of the differences of the softness, mugginess and stickiness among the corsets varied with time through the resting and running periods. It could be concluded that the fabric choice had an influence on the corset wet comfort and that the corset wet comfort was also influenced by human's activity level.