The Subjective And Objective Research On Fabrics’ Thermo-sensation In Mild Environment

With the improvement of living standards, people have higher and higher demands on the"basic necessities".And clothing ranks the first in human’s life, which has become indispensabledaily necessity. As people’s living standards continue improving, thoughts always changing, andhigher quality of life pursuing, so comfort performance of garment fabric has gradually attractedmore attention of consumers and producers. Besides, people require the garment fabric not only cankeep out the cold, cover the body modesty, show beautiful appearances, and such other basicnecessities, but also comfortable performance has become an important factor in selecting garments.With the expansion of scope of human activities, the popularization of air conditioning equipments,changes on microenvironments of human activities, and improvements about the quality of life,comfort performance of garment fabric, especially tactile comfort requirements are furtherenhanced and sense of well-being as a fabric contact comfort has come into one factor, all abovefactors affect the wearing experience of consumer. Nowadays, current study about sense of well-being on fabric contact comfort needs further studied, since we lack testing standards andcharacterization methods on uniform. Accurate, comprehensive and systematic testing andcharacterization about sense of comfort on fabric has become a hot topic in recent years.In the present paper, the research is reported in the following aspects: The first part wasphysical testing of fabrics, the physical properties of fabrics is related to the structurecharacteristics of fabric， moisture absorption/desorption, heat and moisture transfer. The differentphysical parameters influence the changes in temperature and humidity when being touched byhuman skin as well as the roughness of fabrics’ surface. The second testing was objective thermo-sensation. The independently self-established test devices were used to simulate the fabric-humanskin-ambient environment system, testing the change of skin-fabric system temperature andhumidity. The third part was the testing of subjective evaluation and objective testing, using thetemperature and relative humidity sensors to measure the changes of temperature and humidity inthe skin surface respective, combined with the evaluation of subjects, to reveal the relationshipbetweenthesubjectivesensationandthefabrics’changeoftemperatureandthehumidity.Thefourth part was the fabric surface roughness testing, it used the independently developed three dimensionalsingle point friction tester to analyze the fabric roughness affected the basic physical properties, theorganization of fabric, the fiber types, the tightness. The last part was to analyze the correlation shipof the basic physical properties, the organization of fabric, the fiber types and the tightness.It has been found that, there were big relationship on the basic physical properties, theobjective testing, the objective thermo-sensation and the roughness. In the objective test, the bigtemperature change happened in the rib, mossstitch, links and links, single jersey. For abouthumidity change links and links3+5＞mossstitch2+2,1+1＞rib3+5, the temperature and humiditychange of modal fabric was higher than other fiber, the cotton fabric was lower than other; in thesubjective testing, the humidity of40%fabric was uncomfortable, and the change between thetemperature and humidity to the human skin was higher than other fabric. The temperature changeof rib3+5and the links and links2+2was higher; in the roughness testing, the resultant force rib2+2,mossstitch2+2was higher than others, the single jersey’s force was lower, the wool fabric force waslower than other fibers, the cotton one was higher. During the correlation analysis, it got theroughness effected the subjective evaluation and the touch point of objective tests; the objectivetests had the same change with the subjective evaluation, and reflected the characteristics ofroughness; the subjective evaluation reflected the thermo-sensation, it had important relationshipwith the objective and roughness. But some data had still independent and small correlation withother experiments, the reason may be the factors influencing the fabric thermo-sensation were plenty,the combination function of factors could influent the thermo-sensation and fabrics’ comfort, itshould make a second test in all directions to analyze the influence factors to the fabrics’ thermo-sensation.