Effect of Weft Yarn Structure on Clothing Thermal Comfort for Medical Textiles

Clothing thermal comfort is of vital importance for medical textiles, as far as paraplegic and quadriplegic patients, whose lack of mobility decreases the circulation of blood, are concerned. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of fabrics woven in different cotton weft yarns produced by new spinning technologies on clothing thermal comfort. Fabrics with 2/2 twill structure were woven in Picanol Airjet machine with the same 20s/1 carded cotton warp yarns and (i) 21s/1 twistless cotton yarns, (ii) 16s/1 Nu-Torque (TM) spun cotton yarns, (iii) 16s/1 Murata vortex spun cotton yarns and (iv) 16s/1 ring spun cotton yarns as weft yarns respectively. All fabrics were bleached and scoured. A series of experiments related to thermal comfort properties were carried out such as thermal transmittance, air permeability, water vapour permeability, water absorbency and wickability. Generally, the results showed that a lower level of yarn twist enhanced clothing thermal comfort.