Developing The Unidirectional Water-transport Knitted Sportswear Fabric And Studying On Its Wearing Comfort Properties

In recent years,with the improvement of living quality,people have begun to pay more attention to health and sport.At present,many different types of water-transport and quick-drying sportswear fabrics have been researched and developed from domestic and overseas.But only few kinds of those fabrics can meet the requirements of the unidirectional water-transport(mainly formed by printing methods).Currently,most of unidirectional water-transport knitted fabrics have their own disadvantages.For example,the air permeability of unidirectional water-transport knitted fabrics is deteriorated after hydrophobic printing finishing process,or the problems about uneven dyeing,difficult to color and other problem will be caused while the unidirectional water-transport fabrics knitted with different hydrophobic fibers(such as polypropylene and polyester interweaving).Therefore,unidirectional water-transport fabric is developed by designing the fabric structure and raw materials which in order to reduce the adhesion between the body and the fabric to improve the fabric wearing comfort properties is a new research direction of knitted sports fabrics.Firstly,in this paper,two different types of unidirectional water-transport fabrics are designed and developed,fancy plush unidirectional water-transport fabric and pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabric,ten different contrast samples are obtained by the different yarns and fabric structure.Also,the influence of yarn materials and fabric structure on thermal conductivity,moisture permeability,wicking ability,quick-drying,air permeability and flexibility is discussed.The results indicate that all the fancy plush unidirectional water-transport fabrics developed by the combination of differential capillary effect,terry structure,and terry sanding have good water-transport ability(the accumulative one-way transport capacity are more than 580),because of the larger capillary forming by sanding and the separated terry loops in the inner layer of the plush fabric.In addition,fancy plush unidirectional water-transport fabric which using the same yarn as the terry yarn and using DTY imitating cotton yarn,Cool Dry polyester yarn,or superfine polyester yarn as the base yarn,their unidirectional water-transport ability can be effectively improved.However,with the increase of terry ratio of the unidirectional water-transport plush fabric(the ratio of terry number to the number of all loops in a pattern repeat),the unidirectional water-transport ability of the fancy plush fabric is increased.However as the increasing of the terry ratio,the number of plain loops in the fabric is reduced and the thick area in the fabric is increased,so that other comfort properties(such as air permeability,moisture permeability,quick-drying ability,flexibility)are reduced to varying degrees.In the pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabric,because of the fiber fineness of the outer layer yarn is smaller than the inner layer yarn,so they all have the ability of unidirectional water-transport,and the unidirectional water-transport ability will be improved by selecting the DTY polyester imitation cotton or shaped fiber for the outer layer of the fabric.Secondly,in order to comprehensively analyze the effect of yarn materials and fabric structure on the thermal-wet comfort properties and wearing ability of fabrics,a multi-level fuzzy analysis method is adopted to evaluate the wearing comfort properties of the fancy plush unidirectional water-transport fabric and pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabric.The results show that under the conditions of the same plush yarn,the base yarn using DTY imitating cotton yarn,Cool Dry polyester yarn,or superfine polyester yarn can effectively improve the wearing comfort properties.And its objective comprehensive score of wearing comfort property are significantly increased.When the proportion of terry ratio of the unidirectional water-transport plush fabric is increased,although the accumulative one-way transport capacity and the wicking ability of the fabric are increased,the other comfort properties(such as thermal conductivity,moisture permeability,fast-drying ability,air permeability etc.)are observed far less than the fabric with a small terry ratio,its objective comprehensive score of wearing comfort property be reduced.In the case of pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabrics,when using DTY imitation cotton yarn or Cool Dry polyester yarn in the outer layer of the fabric,its score of thermal-wet comfort properties is also relatively higher.Finally,in order to further study the wearing comfort properties of the unidirectional water-transport fabrics,a running experiment is also designed in this paper,the fabrics developed in this project are all made into running suits,and the six wearing feelings of stuffy,wet,thermal,sticky,massive,soft will be tested and evaluated comprehensively and subjectively.By analysis and comparison of fabrics subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation in wearing comfort property,the results of the study show that the subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation values of the fabric are improved when the DTY cotton yarn or Cool Dry polyester yarn used in the base yarn of the fancy plush unidirectional water-transport fabrics.In addition,the subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation value in wearing comfort property of the fancy plush fabrics with the 33% terry ratio is better.The subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation value in wearing comfort property of the pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabrics will be increased when the DTY polyester imitation cotton yarn is used in the outer layer(away from the skin).In the process of the exercise,for the pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabric,a stronger subjective and objective comfort performance will be having when the ability of the unidirectional wet property is stronger.Through the comparison of subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation in wearing comfort property,it can be known that the fancy plush fabric developed in this paper is suitable for use as a sports fabric in the autumn and winter seasons due to its suitable thickness and good unidirectional water-transport function,air permeability,moisture permeability,quick-drying ability.The pinhole unidirectional water-transport fabric developed in this paper is suitable for use as a summer sportswear fabric,because of its thinner,lighter and better air permeability moisture permeability and quick-drying ability.