Outdoor Sport clothing & thermal comfort

Natalia Jones.
School of Textiles and Clothing, Nantong University.

When we think about outdoor sports, we think in nature, open landscapes, and hard conditions
of weather and nature. Then necessarily come to the mind the idea of properly protective
clothing that allow the develop of the activity in a comfort and safe way.

Exposure to extremely moisture or dry ambients, combined with the changes of temperature
and humidity provocated by the sport activity, present a changing environment where
materials and clothing need to adapt for, in order to keep their protective function of the body.

Nowadays outdoor sport clothing have become clothes for almost everyday wear. Not only
because fashion trends, but because the develop of thermal comfortable textiles, that have the
capability to adapt in active way of life and changing outdoor and indoor environments.

Items created for camping, climbing and skiing are used beyond the outdoors activities.
Outdoor’s apparel is focusing on weekend activities and global travel, that is why the
innovations in thermal functionality properties are an important value of creasing interest on
new products.

From the perspective of clothing engineering, outdoor gear design has been develop differents
kinds of smart textiles that have as origin knowlegde point the thermal comfort ergonomics
studies.

Thermal Comfort

As it is knew, basically clothes works as protection layer. Clothing can provides a thermal
resistance between the human body and the environment. This functional role of clothing
maintain the body in a comfort thermal state.

Related with outdoor gear, the thermal comfort concept can vary from extreme weather
conditions, and it will depend upon the many other factors.

From this general understanding, clothing comfort is a subjective feeling and it is difficult to
define all factors which affect this feeling. Generally, human thermal comfort depends on
combinations of clothing structure and chemical nature of fibers, external conditions (ambient
temperature, humidity etc.) and factors related to the person (metabolism, physical activities
etc.).
The classic definition of thermal comfort, from ergonomics studies perspective, defined it as
‘that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment’ (ASHRAE,
1966; ISO 7730, 1984). Thermal dissatisfaction may be due to the warm or cool discomfort of
the body, and is expressed by the predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of
dissatisfied (PPD) indices.

The design of thermal functional clothing

Each class of functional clothing has a well defined functionality which distinguishes it from
the other classes. However, in addition to this specific functionality, all functional clothing
classes must fulfill certain requirements which are common to all users. These considerations
can be classified into the following categories: physiological, biomechanical, ergonomic and
psychological. Effective functional wear is based on the integration of all of these
considerations into the design of a clothing system.

For thermal comfort purposes, ergonomics studies give us a serie of evaluation methodologies,
models and measurement techniques, based on the main factors that affect thermal behavior
of clothing. This factors include: the dry thermal insulation, transfer of moisture and vapour
through clothing (e.g. sweat, rain), heat exchange with clothing (conduction, convection,
radiation, evaporation and condensation), compression (e.g. caused by high wind), pumping
effects (e.g. caused by body movement), air penetration (e.g. through fabrics, vents and
openings), subject posture, etc.

Thermal ergonomics evaluation methodologies

TWO PARAMETER MODEL

This model present an approach to assessing the thermal properties of clothing, identifying the
clothing behaviour and attempting to estimate values of dry thermal insulation or vapour
permeation, and moisture that can transfer heat between the body and the environment.
Which is particularly important when the skin sweats.

A simple two-parameter model of clothing consider ‘dry’ heat transfer and moisture transfer as
independent mechanisms, which combine to provide the total effect.

The dry thermal insulation value of clothing

The dry thermal insulation refers to the layer of clothes that works as the basic or intrinsic
clothing insulation (Icl), independent of the external environmental conditions.
This intrinsic (or basic) clothing insulation is a property of the clothing itself (and not the
external environment or body condition) and represents the resistance to heat transfer
between the skin and the clothing surface. Rate of heat transfer through the clothing is by
conduction, which depends on surface area (m2), temperature gradient (°C) between skin and
clothing surface and the thermal conductivity (W m−2/°C) of the clothing.

The simple form to represent this property of clothes, related to clothing worn on the human
body, as a value, is the Clo unit. Clo value gives an estimate of insulation as if any clothing were
distributed evenly over the whole body. We can visualize this knowing that one Clo represent
the thermal insulation required to keep a sedentary person comfortable at 21°C.

The thermal insulation of clothing materials can be measured on standardized equipment

which usually involves placing a sample of material on the equipment and, by measuring heat
flows or temperature, the thermal insulation can be calculated. More sophisticated methods
involve heated manikins with a temperature distribution across the body similar to that of a
human subject. The role of manikins in clothing development has becoming an essential part of
clothing design and evaluation.

Intrinsic resistance of clothing to vapour transfer (Iecl)

Specialy important when sport activities are performend, is the liquid (sweat) on the skin that
need to be evaporates at the skin surface and transported through the clothing to the
environment. Whitin this process surge the the intrinsic evaporative resistance Iecl value, that
represent the resistance made by the clothes to this vapour transfer.

Vapour permeability indices

Basicly speaking permeability refers to breathability capacity of clothes, it is the ability of a

fabric to allow moisture vapour to pass through it. A fabric may have this functional propierty in
different ways, Moisture vapour permeability (MVP) and moisture vapour transmission (MVT)
are more technical terms to use.

There are a number of vapour permeability indices for clothing that have been produced,
between those are Woodcock ‘moisture permeability index’ (im), Total evaporative
resistance— Re,t (kPa m2/W), Evaporative resistance of clothing *—Re,cl(kPa m2 W−1),
Moisture permeability index for clothing— icl. The use of this indices will depend on which way
the breathability propierty needs to be studied. Those indices can be use combinated to get
usefull information.
A five-level system or ‘clothing triangle’ method.

A comprehensive program to design and evaluate clothing will involve a number of tests and
trials. Laboratories specializing in clothing science have developed integrated methods for
assessing clothing.

One of those methods that has been very used is the ‘clothing triangle’ or the five level system,
as a method for developing and evaluating clothing.

The picture show on the wide base of the triangle, those analysis and calculations that
represents the wide range of simple tests which are performed on fabrics using simple heat
transfer apparatus, this means that they are easy to conduct and repeatable but unrealistic as
they do not use human subjects. The narrow part of the triangle represents field evaluation
trials using humans wearing the clothing. The methods require relatively large resources and
are difficult to control, but are more realistic.

Figure 1: A five-level system for the analysis of the physiological properties of textiles and
garments. Source: Human Thermal Environments, K.C.Parsons (2003)

Conclusion

The thermal comfort considerations for outdoor sport clothes design and development, can be
envolve a interdisciplinary range of categories such as physiological, biomechanical, ergonomic
and psychological. Refering to the ergonomic categorie, the methodologies and measurement
methods present in this text are just a show piece to illustrated part of the theorical tools
available to develop this type of textiles products. May be give an idea of the basic evaluation
that are necessary for thermal comfort purposes.

References

Parsons, (2003), Human Thermal Environments, 2(ed.)

Gupta, December 2011, Design and engineering of functional clothing , Indian Journal of Fibre & Textile
Research Vol.36, pp. 327-335.