Abstract
Water transport through garments has influence on the microclimate between the garments and the body beneath; thus the thermal comfort feeling for the wearer. Soybean protein fiber (SPF), a new type environmental fiber, which has been reported to be superior in water transfer, is often blended with cotton to improve the water transport property. In this paper, T-shirts made of this SPF/cotton blended fabric were focused in comparison with T-shirts made of cotton fabric. Wicking and immersion tests were carried out on the two types of fabrics to investigate the water transport and absorption properties, respectively; wear trials of T-shirts made of the fabrics were also conducted. Comparing with the cotton fabric which had better water absorptive property, it was found that the blended fabric with superior wicking ability could not only delay the increase of the vapor pressure under the T-shirt at the beginning of the exercise, but also help to keep it lower through the exercise significantly, and also kept the skin temperature under the T-shirt lower. It was made clear that it is the water transfer property rather than the water absorption property helps to take away sweat quickly and prevents the increase of the humidity and temperature at skin surface, thus maintaining a comfort microclimate under garments.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
BS1339 (1981) Definitions, formulae and constants relating to the humidity of air
BS3449 (1990) Testing the resistance of fabrics to water absorption (static immersion test)
Harnett PR, Mehta PN (1984) A survey and comparison of laboratory test methods for measuring wicking. Text Res J 54:471–477
Imamura R (2000) The effect of sportswear material construction on body temperatures during exercise in windy conditions. In: Werner J, Hexamer M (eds) 9th international conference on environmental ergonomics. Shaker Verlag, Aachen, pp 323–326
Imamura R (2002) Sweat accumulation in a kendo ensemble during indoor summer training. In: Tochihara T, Ohnaka T (eds) 10th international conference on environmental ergonomics. Elsevier, Fukuoka, Japan, pp 535–538
Lin YW, Jou GT, Camenzind M, Bruggmann G, Bolli W, Rossi R (2005) Effects of heat and moisture transfer in firefighter: a study of the effect of underwear on physiological property and thermal protection in firefighter’s clothing assembly. In 11th international conference on environmental ergonomics. Ystad, Sweden, pp 462–466
Richards M, THERMPROTECT n (2005) Effects of moisture on the heat transfer through protective clothing. In 11th international conference on environmental ergonomics. Ystad, Sweden
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dai, XQ., Imamura, R., Liu, GL. et al. Effect of moisture transport on microclimate under T-shirts. Eur J Appl Physiol 104, 337–340 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-007-0628-z
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-007-0628-z