Volume 22, Issue 4

Antimicrobial finishing is increasingly used in textile products to increase their functionality. Antimicrobial properties became extremely important during the COVID-19 situation. The main problems faced by antimicrobial finishing are nontoxicity and durability (wash-resistance) of antibacterial activity. Also, it is important to determine whether the antimicrobial finishing changes comfort properties, such as air permeability. This paper deals with the durability of antimicrobial treatment, that is, resistance to washing, and effect on the structural changes that may have influence on the comfort properties, such as permeability to air. Knits of various raw compositions were antimicrobial-treated with the new commercial antimicrobial product, Si Bactericidal (Smart Inovation, Portugal). After the antimicrobial treatment, knitted specimens were washed 50 times and changes in their structural parameters, air permeability, and antimicrobial activity were measured. It was found that the mentioned antimicrobial treatment gives very good antimicrobial activity to the treated fabric and is wash-resistant and long-lasting. Also, it does not change dimensions and permeability to air of the treated fabrics with some exceptions of cotton-based knitted structures.

The aim of the article is to analyze the seams connecting the covering textiles in paraglider wing and estimate their physical strength. The most extreme flight parameters (the angle of attack and velocity) in the numerical model of the wing allow the determination of the mean pressure inside the contour and the maximal difference between the pressures on the inner and the outer material surfaces. The preprocessing stage and numerical calculations in Ansys environment consider three different covering materials. The tool Porous Media is used to create the objects of a given value of air permeability. The estimated parameter of seam is the maximal pressure difference between both sides of the covering material, which that interacts with the test results. The quality index of the seam is defined by the maximal force to seam rupture and relative elongation during rupture. The obtained results indicate that the seams are resistant to the pressure difference caused by the most extreme flight parameters.

In this study, an algebraic model and its experimental verification was carried out to investigate the effect of moisture content on the heat loss that takes place due to conduction of sock fabrics. The results show that increasing moisture content in the studied socks caused a significant increase in their conductive heat loss. Plain knitted socks with different fiber composition were wetted to a saturated level, and then their moisture content was reduced stepwise. When achieving the required moisture content, the socks samples were characterized by the Alambeta testing instrument for heat transfer. Three different existing modified mathematical models for the thermal conductivity of wet fabrics were used for predicting thermal resistance of socks under wet conditions. The results from both ways are in very good agreement for all the socks at a 95% confidence level. In the above-mentioned models, the prediction of thermal resistance presents newly a combined effect of the real filling coefficient and thermal conductivity of the so-called “wet” polymers instead of dry polymers. With these modifications, the used models predicted the thermal resistance at different moisture levels. Predicted thermal resistance is converted into heat transfer (due to conduction) with a significantly high coefficient of correlation.

Nanofibrous dressings serve as an impeccable candidate in the management of wounds. Nanofibrous composites composed of polycaprolactone (PCL) and green tea using dual solvent systems at different ratios were fabricated through electrospinning. Pure PCL electrospun fibers along with composites were characterized by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), wettability, water uptake analysis, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). SEM indicated that fibrous morphology and the diameter of PCL/green tea were smaller for chloroform/dimethylformamide (DMF) (601 nm) and acetone/DMF (896 nm) than the pure PCL (673 nm and 1,104 nm for chloroform/DMF and acetone/DMF, respectively). Wettability of the fabricated composites was increased, and pure PCL fibers were slightly more hydrophobic (100°) than PCL/green tea (94°). Water uptake of the composites was enhanced compared with PCL significantly in acetone/DMF. The PCL/green tea nanofibrous wound dressing with enhanced physicochemical properties serves as an indispensable candidate for wound healing applications.

The objective of the work was the preliminary experimental investigation of cut-resistant materials including a biomimetic perspective. The effects of the cutting were expressed as static and dynamic cut resistance of the following materials: knitted fabrics, woven fabrics, continuously coated knitted fabrics, and dot-coated knitted fabrics. The cutting process gives rise to frictional forces, but the current test methods for cut-resistant gloves are not designed to measure them. Therefore additionally, the cut resistance of the material was evaluated using a modified procedure based on the standard EN 1082-1, taking into consideration grip strength tests to assess if there is a potential correlation between cut resistance and anti-slip properties.

The aim of this work is to estimate the effect of loop length and Lycra weight percent (Lwp) on the geometrical and thermo-physiological comfort of elastic plain knitted fabric. Fifty single jersey knitted fabric samples were produced at five levels of Lycra weight percent (Lwp) (4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, and 8%) and loop length (2.7 mm, 2.9 mm, 3.1 mm, 3.3 mm, and 3.4 mm) with full plaited (fp) and half plaited (hp) of bare Lycra. The thermo-physiological comfort properties (thermal conductivity, absorptivity, and water vapor permeability), air permeability, and geometrical properties were measured at standard of each one. The results showed that the elastic single jersey knitted fabric thickness ranged between 3.12 times and 4.2 times of the yarn diameter (d). The fabric thickness increased when loop length is increased and decreased when Lwp is increased. The thermal conductivity, absorptivity, and water vapor resistance (WVR) decreased with Lwp increasing.

The objective of the present work was to evaluate the surface wettability of commercially available polymeric protective gloves, as well as to determine the effects of their surface topography in conjunction with the glove material on the hydrophobic properties of the final products, together with surface free energy (SFE) and work of adhesion. The geometric structures imparted to the surface led to different levels of hydrophobicity and SFE. Most of the studied materials were characterized by good wettability properties. It was shown that a textured surface topography affects wettability. The highest SFE was found for nitrile butadiene rubber materials. All materials except for nitrile butadiene rubber exhibited good hydrophobic properties and relatively low work of adhesion.

The main purpose of the article is to present the new possibilities of producing composite reinforcement with the use of a computer embroidery machine. This kind of production is in line with the principles of sustainable development. The study below presents the results of strength tests of composites containing sevenfold embroidery systems. Each variant included different directions of arrangement of individual layers as a reinforcement. Flax roving was used to strengthen the composite. Flax fibers are characterized by the highest strength among all-natural fibers, at the level of 50–80 cN/tex. The composite was made using the vacuum bag method, using epoxy resin. The embroidery was made on a ZSK embroidery machine, type JCZA 0109-550. The test material was subjected to strength tests—tensile strength, tensile elongation, and bending strength, on the INSTRON machine. Based on the research, it can be concluded that the arrangement of the roving in the direction of the tensile force allowed to obtain the best mechanical properties.

The study investigates retroreflective fabrics’ efficiency from the point of view of the interaction of their visibility, thermo-physiological comfort properties, and durability (represented by physical-mechanical performance). The effect of the combination of two production technologies (reflective transfer films and screen printing method) and two reflector covering sizes (25% and 85%) was examined. Technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method was used to determine the best solution considering the abovementioned tested categories of properties. Retroreflective performance was in congruence with the used design coverage factor of the tested pattern. It was found that retroreflection of the tested pattern produced using screen printing technology was significantly lower than retroreflection of an identical pattern made by a transfer film. On the contrary, in terms of thermo-physiological comfort and physical-mechanical performance of the tested samples, screen printing technology shows significantly better results in almost all tested properties, especially in water vapor permeability, moisture management, and physical-mechanical performance. The solution for the abovementioned contradictory results can be achieved by using a combination of the advantages associated with each of these technology methods. Screen printing can be applied to specific regions of clothing that are exposed to extreme loading or sweating, and the transfer of film elements ensures high visibility with respect to the standards and biomotion principles that are deployed as prevalent benchmarks in the industry.

The research on wearable glove sensor system has been increasing over recent years because of the need for portability and comfort. This study presents a fabric-based integrated sensor glove system with five sensing zones. Five sensors are knitted by silver-plated nylon yarn and embedded into glove directly using intarsia technology. Various parameters including sensor elasticity, sizes of embedded sensor as well as glove are discussed, respectively. Further, selected or chosen integrated sensor glove is manufactured and tested for recognizing gestures. Results show that elasticity affects effective sensing range of knitted sensors, size has significant influence on sensors’ sensitivity, and appropriate glove size helps avoiding nonlinear sensing phenomenon. Finally, the glove system, by extracting feature data, can distinguish Chinese number gestures very well and has also the potential to recognize more hand gestures in the future.

This paper examines the influence of weaving variables such as yarn count, number of layers, warp and weft ratio, materials of the top layer, weft density and interlocking cell shape, and size on the thermal performance of multilayer interlocked woven fabrics. A split-plot design was used to construct a total of 64 fabric structures, which were assessed for thermal performance in terms of resistance to convective, conductive, and radiative heat. It was found that, for equal weft density and yarn number, protective performance improved with the number of fabric layers and with the presence of air cells between these layers, especially if air was not trapped within and could rather pass freely between the cells. An optimal combination of factors for the thermal response to the three types of heat was established via a Derringer–a much needed desirability function. The results of this paper are useful for identifying the interaction between configuration parameters and thermal performance, and hence for the design of improved heat protective clothing.

The local binary pattern (LBP) and its variants have shown their effectiveness in texture images representation. However, most of these LBP methods only focus on the histogram of LBP patterns, ignoring the spatial contextual information among them. In this paper, a uniform three-structure descriptor method was proposed by using three different encoding methods so as to obtain the local spatial contextual information for characterizing the nonuniform texture on the surface of colored spun fabrics. The testing results of 180 samples with 18 different color schemes indicate that the established texture representation model can accurately express the nonuniform texture structure of colored spun fabrics. In addition, the overall correlation index between texture features and sample parameters is 0.027 and 0.024, respectively. When compared with the LBP and its variants, the proposed method obtains a higher representational ability, and simultaneously owns a shorter time complexity. At the same time, the algorithm proposed in this paper enjoys ideal effectiveness and universality for fabric image retrieval. The mean Average Precision (mAP) of the first group of samples is 86.2%; in the second group of samples, the mAP of the sample with low twist coefficient is 89.6%, while the mAP of the sample with high twist coefficient is 88.5%.

This paper presents the features of yarn structure formation on spinning machine, i.e. yarn twist change when winding. It was considered that the twist distribution was one of the reasons for its decrease along the formed yarn. In this paper, based on analysis of changes in thickness and twist due to axial deformation, we consider a yarn moving at constant speed. Moving dynamics of yarn are studied here by using Euler variables. The correspondences of forward and reverse twist waves’ distribution speeds on presented frequency at various vibration forms are obtained. The parameters of Doppler effect for the waves distributed along the yarn are determined.

In construction, textiles can be used either for reinforcing the structure or for finishing design. When we talk about function, the interior is no less important than the exterior and architecture of the building. Thus using textiles to reinforce the structure of buildings, textiles often perform a desired function of reinforcing the “finish.” Building textile materials include fibers that are mixed with concrete, fiberglass reinforcement meshes, insulators, etc. Textile architecture covers permanent tensile structures based on polyester or glass fiber fabrics, with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) coating and awnings generally supported by polyester or polyolefin fabrics, with or without coating, especially for gardening. All above topics are covered within this perspective with the experts from the group of smart textiles for building and living within COST Action CA17107 European Network to Connect Research and Innovation Efforts on Advanced Smart Textiles (CONTEXT) [1].

This work deals with prediction of the quantities of sewing threads required to sew a garment using cover stitches for the different classes of 600 (602, 605 and 607 cover stitches) by performing a rapid and precise methods (Geometrical and statistical). Sewing consumption value was estimated based on the geometrical method of different cover stitch shapes to prevent inventory of stocks for each stitch type. In the prediction of the sewing thread consumption for each investigated stitch, it was assumed that the consumption is a function of the input parameters, such as material thickness, stitch density, yarn linear density, and seam width. In addition, a statistical method based on multi-linear regression was established. The coefficient R 2 value was determined to evaluate the precision of the geometrical and statistical methods. By comparing the theoretical thread consumption with the experimental ones, it is concluded that the geometrical method is more accurate than the statistical method regarding the range of R 2 (from 98.78% to 99.38%), which encouraged industrialists to use geometrical models to predict thread consumption. The input parameters contributing to the sewing thread consumption behavior were studied and analyzed. It was concluded that the most important parameters influencing thread consumption are stitch density followed by seam width. Both yarn density and material thickness have a low contribution to the thread consumption value.