Development of Cold Weather Protective Clothing Using Knitted Fabric
摘要
Clothing made for cold weather should suffice for minimum heat loss and good sweat evaporation. As the technology started to develop, researchers and academicians tried to come up with more alternatives with respect to raw materials and methodology. Generally, the protective clothing appears to be bulkier, and it will have three layers. Bulkier fabrics tend to give less comfort where knitting stands as the solution to give breathability and comfortness. Knitting is a process of intermeshing the loops of yarn where we can achieve our key properties like thermal conductivity, thermal resistance, water vapor permeability, and air permeability just by increasing the loop length and selecting a suitable fabric structure. The possibility for knitting has been analyzed, and the various desirable properties like thermal conductivity and air permeability were studied in relation to the structures. The production of cold weather protective clothing involves the right selection of fibers, yarns, and fabric. The specific property, like moisture management, can be enhanced through coating and thus reducing the layers. This chapter gives a detailed idea about the selection of fabric structure with regards to each property and shows some properties can be enhanced with functional agents. It also suggests the way to reduce the fabric weight by reducing the layers.