Impact Resistance and Comfort Properties of Textile Structures for Sportswear
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ISSN 1229-9197 (print version) ISSN 1875-0052 (electronic version)
Impact Resistance and Comfort Properties of Textile Structures for Sportswear Rajkishore Nayak1,2*, Sinnappoo Kanessalingam2, Arun Vijayan2, Lijing Wang2, Rajive Padhye2, and Lyndon Arnold2 1
Fashion and Textiles Merchandising, School of Communication and Design, RMIT University Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam 2 Centre for Advanced Materials and Performance Textiles, School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University, Melbourne 3056, Australia (Received August 23, 2017; Revised January 13, 2020; Accepted January 17, 2020) Abstract: Protective padding is commonly used in many sporting activities to prevent impact related injuries. In rugby, shoulder pads absorb and disperse the force and energy of an impact with a playing surface or another player. Although the majority of the commercial shoulder pads currently available can reduce the impact force during a front-on tackle, they provide limited amount of thermal comfort to the wearer. In this research, flexible textile structures were designed and investigated for their potential to effectively dissipate the force of impact over a wider area, thus reducing the risk of injury. The impact resistance of these textile structures placed over a body simulant was compared against commercial foam pads using a ‘drop test’ method. The results indicated that all the flexible textile structures reduced the impact force. Although their protection level was not as high as the commercial foam, the textile structures showed a higher level of thermal comfort as measured by air permeability, thermal resistance and water vapor resistance. The results were analyzed using oneway ANOVA followed by post-hoc analysis using IBM SPSS software. The Post-hoc analysis showed a significant difference among the test results of various fabrics for impact absorption, air permeability, thermal resistance and water vapor resistance, which are also discussed in this paper. Keywords: Impact resistance, Sportswear, 3D knitted fabric, Water vapour resistance, Thermal comfort
spacer yarns. Liu et al. [7] reported on the potential of using warp knitted spacer fabrics in PPE for sporting activities. Spacer fabrics in a 3D construction have shown promise for applications that require impact protection, relief of pressure, and friction, due to their resilience imparted by the connecting filaments. However, depending on their construction, these fabrics may pose challenges in conforming to the body contour, similar to foam, which may lead to increased injuries. The physical, mechanical and comfort properties of several 3D spacer fabrics were characterized by Joanne and Ng [9]. It was observed that the air permeability and thermal conductivity are closely related to the fabric density. Woven fabrics in 3D structures have been explored by many researchers for the required impact resistance. For example both 3D multi-layer structure and angle-interlock structure were selected for impact protection due to their compressive behavior [10-13
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