Thermal conductivity of wool/pet weaves

Abstract

Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.

It is well known that thermal conductivity of fabric is mainly influenced by their porosity. The fabric porosity is a function of construction parameters such as yarn fineness and set of weft and warp. The ideal volume porosity can be computed from basic fabric parameters and the structure of elementary cell. The main aim of this work is the creation of simple mechanistic model for the prediction of fabric thermal conductivity from basic fabric properties such as yarn diameters, weft and warp sett, planar weight and thickness of fabric. This model is in fact the combination of air conductivity and conductivity of fibrous phase in hierarchy fibers, yarn and fabric. The experimentally obtained thermal conductivities of 27 wool/PET plain weaves with constant sett of warp and varying sett of weft and varying yarn fineness are used for checking of the predictive ability of this model.