Clothing is thermal insulation

Researchers and developers of nonwovens consider clothing as a "second skin". Created from chemical fibers, insulation materials for clothing have become the most popular textile product produced in Russia today. How to apply innovative materials so that they work as efficiently as possible? 

 

Modern approaches differ from the previously widespread view of the thermal insulation of clothing. Technologies are developing rapidly. Even in the last decade, this task was solved by increasing the mass and volume of the product package. Today, the consumer demands that clothes be light, ergonomic and compact.

 

 

The change of views was preceded by the appearance of new materials and technologies at the end of the XX- early XXI centuries. They significantly influenced the ideas, first of all, of the designers of insulated clothing. The achievements of technical textiles – synthetic fabrics, non-woven materials, membranes – are available and «plastic », allow you to create a new type of clothing, and yet yesterday it was talked about as futurism.

 

So, with the advent of effective technologies and materials, new opportunities for tailoring and designing clothes, a set of thermal insulation properties is formed based on three main concepts: «Universal», «Zoned» and «Polymodule».

 

The most common approach is  «Universal concept». It involves the selection of materials based on the average universal properties of the main thermal insulation layer of only one variety (for example, fibrous non-woven thermally bonded material Holofiber ® SOFT, with a surface density of 150 g/m2) and with additional processing (for example, calendering). It assumes a unified use of non-woven fabric for various parts and sections of clothing (jacket, overalls, overalls, trousers, vest).

 

 

«The universal concept» suggests a simplified but effective way to increase the protective properties of clothing. It could be conditionally formulated as follows: "the thicker and denser, the warmer!In practice, this is realized in two main ways: increasing the surface density of a layer of non-woven thermal insulation material; increasing the number of layers (for example, not one layer of non-woven material, but two). And in this respect, this approach is close to traditional and quite understandable trends for the end user.

 

The second concept is – «zoned». It can be recognized as one of the most complex, costly, but at the same time, progressive and effective approaches to improving the thermal insulation properties of clothing. Due to the advent of high-tech tailoring and the increasing differentiation of the needs for special orders for various types of clothing (military kits for special purposes, outdoor, sports and climbing equipment, Arctic clothing, etc.), new opportunities arise for the construction of thermal insulation on the principle of zoning.

 

When choosing the concept of "zoning", the following features are identified, which are important for developers and manufacturers of clothing to take into account: the design tasks become more complicated, the number of various parts increases; the cost of the product increases; the issues of differentiated storage of bulk nonwovens are updated; specialized technological and organizational solutions are required for serial replication of thermal insulation parts; labor productivity decreases; it is required a well-developed «base of solutions », which cannot be recognized as universal when changing the design of products; quality control tasks become more complicated; requirements for the qualification of personnel (technologists, designers and seamstresses) increase; the cost of the product significantly increases.

 

 

The beginning of the development of the «polymodule» (multilayer) equipment system, developed by the experts of the plant «Thermopol» specifically for non-woven formulations Holofiber®, was laid in 2005, together with the FGBNU «Research Institute of Occupational Medicine » and introduced into numerous products.

 

«The polymodule concept» implies the presence of at least two layers of a clothing package, inside which thermal insulation nonwovens can also be included according to the principle of layering. This approach differed significantly from the view taken at that time on "insulated clothing" (overcoat, padded jacket), in which the issue of thermal insulation was solved mainly by increasing the density, thickness and mass of the insulating layer.

 

To be continued.