Abstract:

Objective Sweating during summer exercise can easily cause the human body to feel moist and sticky. Therefore, it is important to improve the moisture-wicking capability as well as the heat and humidity comfort of summer sportswear. Sweating and heat dissipation vary from part to part of the body, so different functional fabrics designed in different parts have great benefits for comfort. But the process of sewing fabrics with different characteristics at different positions is complicated and has low production efficiency. Therefore, seamless design and integrated positioning forming technology can be used.

Method When the yarn density of the surface layer of the fabric was greater than the inner layer, the additional pressure of the surface layer was greater than that of the inner layer, and the moisture can move from the interior to the surface, which was called the differential capillary effect. Based on this effect, 55.5 dtex(14 f) polyester was selected as the ground yarn, and 93.3 dtex(384 f) superfine fiber polyester yarn and 92.2 dtex(72 f) conventional polyester yarn were selected as the veils. Santoni seamless machine was adopted to design 5 different structures of fabrics, then the influence of different yarn types and structures on the fabric's moisture-transfer was investigated.

Results The graph of contact angle changes with time showed that among the three kinds of yarns, the liquid diffuses fastest in 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarns and slowest in 55.5 dtex(14 f) yarns(Fig. 4). The wicking height experiment showed that the longitudinal wicking effect of the combination of 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarn and 55.5 dtex(14 f) ground yarn was more significant than that of 92.2 dtex(72 f) yarn(Tab. 2). The difference between the liquid diffusion shape obtained from the drip diffusion experiment and the longitudinal and transverse wicking was consistent, indicating that the longitudinal diffusion effect of liquid in the fabric was better(Fig. 5). The accumulative one-way transfer capacity in the MMT water management experiment was F1>F4>F3>F2>F5 from large to small(Fig. 6). The overall moisture management capacity (OMMC) showed that the combined rating of 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarn for the veil and 55.5(14 f) dtex(14 f) yarn for the ground was above grade 3, which had better unidirectional moisture-transfer capacity, F1 and F4 have the best moisture-transfer capacity among the two raw materials(Fig. 6). The fiber diameters of 55.5 dtex(14 f) yarn, 92.2 dtex(72 f) yarn, and 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarn measured were 5.448, 15.548 and 28.343 μm(Tab. 4). It was calculated that the equivalent capillary radius of the three yarns were 0.061 7, 1.757 1 and 3.211 μm, respectively. It was concluded that the capillary pressure difference between 55.5(14 f) dtex yarn and 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarn was 16.647 4 kPa, and that between 55.5 dtex yarn and 92.2 dtex(72 f) yarn is 5.282 4 kPa. This proved that the differential capillary effect of different f-number yarns was significant.

Conclusion The results showed that 93.3 dtex(384 f) yarn had a higher additional pressure difference than the 92.2 dtex(72 f) yarn group. The superfine polyester yarn group had good unidirectional moisture-tranfer capactity, and the water management rating was above grade 3. In the stitches, the more the number of uniform structures in which the ground yarn and the veil were looped, the more significant the moisture-tranfer effect. Therefore, the structure with more uniform structures were suitable for the areas with more sweat. Compared with the uniform structure, the loose structure with an incomplete loop of the ground yarn was light, thin and permeble, which was suitable for configuration in the transition area. Among the five structures, F1 with uniform structure had the best unidirectional moisture-tranfer capacity, which was suitable for areas with large sweating volume, such as the chest and back; F2 and F4 with loose structure had good moisture-tranfer capacity and were suitable for transition structure; F3 and F5 are thin and permeable, suitable for armpit, side, and other positions.

Key words: weft single jersey fabric, forming structure, unidirectional moisture-transfer, plated stitch, capillary effect