Abstract:

To study the influence of ventilation pores and ventilation channel on human body thermal physiology and subjective comfort, two types of sportswear were designed employing knitting holes and cord structures. Experiments were carried out in the climate chamber to evaluate the objective physiological indexes of the developed sportswear, such as skin temperature, under clothing humidity and sweat evaporation rate. Subjective sensations including thermal, wetness, stickiness and comfort were evaluated as well. The results show that the clothes with ventilation pores significantly increase the evaporation of human sweat and reduce the humidity under the clothes, with all the subjective sensations significantly reduced. However, when the ventilation channels were further added on the basis of ventilation holes, the thermal resistance of clothing is increased due to the increase of the thickness of air layer under the clothing, which is contradictive to the improvement of the thermal physiology and comfort sensation. It is learned that when designing sportswear, consideration of ventilation performance should be balanced with the premise of controlling the thermal resistance.

Key words: cord structure, hole picking structure, knitted sportswear, human thermal physiology, thermal-wet comfort, ventilation design