This study investigates carbon nanotube textiles as advanced personal protection equipment for firefighters and first responders. Carbon nanotubes are lightweight, flame resistant, and possess high mechanical and thermal properties. Carbon nanotubes are also thermally anisotropic, meaning they easily conduct heat along the axis of an individual tube, and are relatively insulating across the tube's diameter. By recognizing this anisotropic behavior, heat transfer through a layer of aligned carbon nanotubes in a garment can be partially redirected to a cold reservoir thereby protecting the wearer from heat stress and exhaustion. Finite element models were developed to simulate a carbon nanotube layer embedded in a firefighting garment and thermally connected to a cold reservoir. Simulation showed that under heat stress conditions, firefighter skin temperature was considerably reduced by the cooling layer.

Compression garments apply pressure to the body to provide health benefits, such as increasing the blood circulation, shaping the body and supporting healing after medical procedures. Fabrics used for compression garments are elastic, and the amount of fabric stretching and the ability of maintaining the stretching force are directly related to the compression effectiveness. However, there is currently little information about the fabric and its mechanical properties, and there is a demand from compression garment manufacturers to better understand the fabric properties and their serviceability. This paper studied the physical and mechanical properties of 4 Nylon/Spandex knitted fabrics as commercial medical compression garments. In particular, fabric elasticity and bursting strength were examined to demonstrate the applicability of the fabrics for providing satisfactory compression. It was observed that the compression garment fabrics had an open knitted structure with stable dimensions, and Spandex was only present in the wale direction. Tensile assessment revealed that the compression fabrics were strong and their breaking extension was well beyond 200%. The fabric stretching force had a near linear relationship with its elongation when the fabric was stretched upto 100% extension. After fatigue stretching, the average immediate recovery of compression fabrics examined was more than 95% and the average elastic recovery after an extended period of relaxation was at least 98%. High fabric bursting strength and compression extension were also found. The results of fabric physical and mechanical properties from this study are very important for understanding whether a fabric is suitable for engineering compression garments, and also for estimating the required compression force for designing an individualised compression garments with the medical compression fabrics.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between breast shape measurements and breast beauty assessment. Breast Beauty Subjective Assessment System (BBSAS) was developed to evaluate the beauty of breasts. 75 female subjects aged 20-39 years were selected for assessment from the anthropometric database of BIFT-Aimer Human Engineering Research Centre. 43 females working in intimate apparel design were chosen as judges to answer a five-scale questionnaire using the BBSAS. 66 detailed measurements especially related to the breast region were also taken for investigation. Data analysis results indicated that the breast beauty score was highly correlated with breast side view profile and breast erectness. Beautiful breasts selected by judges had the following common characteristics: the ratio of bust height to whole body height was 0.71; a triangle was constructed by front neck point, right bust point and left bust point was an isosceles triangle with the top angle less than 60°. The regression equation to predict the breast beauty scale was obtained based on key breast measurements. This study provides a new knowledge on relationship between the breast shape and breast beauty, as well as some useful guidelines for bra design.

The degradation behavior of silk fibroin biomaterials in human body is definitely vital for the growth of tissues. Therefore, an investigation to regulate the degradation behaviors of silk fibroin films by changing the degree of cross-linking is presented in this paper. The in-vitro experiments in the simulated human body environment showed that the degradation rate of cross-linked silk fibroin films was inversely proportional to the degree of cross-linking. After degradation, the ratio of crystalline part in the SF films increased. This approach would provide a new direction in controlling the degradation time by cross-linking the silk fibroin for specific tissue engineering application.

Poly(Methyl Methacrylate) PMMA/Organically Modified Montmorillonite (O-MMT) composite microfibers membrane coated with TiO_2 has significant advantages in cationic dyes adsorption and can break down the adsorbed dyes under UV radiation, which is quite useful in water treatment. In this work, PMMA/O-MMT composite microfibers were firstly prepared by emulsion polymerization combined with electrospinning, and then coated by nanosize TiO_2 using RF magnetron sputtering. The effects of TiO_2 sputter coating on morphology and surface modulus was characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), while the wetting behaviour was studied by drop shape analyzer. The photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue was tested under UV radiation and the properties of the treated and untreated samples were compared. It was observed from SEM images that TiO_2 was well dispersed and deposited on the surface of PMMA/O-MMT microfibers, while the AFM results showed increase in the surface modulus after TiO_2 coating. Besides, the wettability of the microfibers membrane coated with TiO_2 was altered, which facilitated water treatment in practical use. Furthermore, the PMMA/O-MMT microfibers membrane coated with TiO_2 performed well in photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue. In conclusion, PMMA/O-MMT composite microfibers membrane coated with TiO_2 was quite promising in water treatment.

It is proposed that Poly(Trimethylene Terephthalate) (PTT) filaments are used for fabricating vascular prostheses instead of Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) (PET) because of their lower Young's modulus and superior elastic recovery. The heat setting process is necessary to keep the stability of shape and mechanical properties as well as making the flattened tubular structures round. However, the best heat setting condition for keeping properties of lower Young's modulus and superior elastic recovery of PTT filaments is unknown. This paper studies the influence of different heat setting conditions to the change of Young's modulus and elastic recovery. The temperature range is chosen from 120 to 180 °C and time period is chosen from 30 s to 90 s. The heat setting of yarns is both done in the relaxation state and tension state. Results show that the best heat setting conditions to get lower modulus, higher elastic recovery and better creep property at the temperature of 160 °C under the tension state through 60 s. The tension or relaxation state has the biggest influence on elastic recovery and Young's modulus while time period has the least influence.

A fractal model for predicting the effective heat conductivity of fibrous assemblies was established. In the model, fiber-to-fiber contact influence on solid heat conductivity was taken into consideration. Radiative heat conductivity was also considered to get the effective heat conductivity. The effective heat conductivity was proved to be related to the following parameters, including the pore area fractal dimension, tortuosity fractal dimension, maximum and minimum pore diameters, solid conductivity, air conductivity, porosity and the ratio of the number of perpendicular channels to the total number of channels. Experiment was conducted to verify the model, and good agreement was found between the experimental and theoretical results.

A virtual CAD system for thermal functional design is reported in this paper. An improved multi-style garment design and segmental condition specification was achieved in this system. Moreover, this system predicted the thermal status of human and clothing system while the predicted results correspond well with the experimental results. Both 3D static and dynamic visualization were presented to the users to get a feedback for the design case.

In this paper, we analyzed the data of the 17 body sizing measurement parameters of 300 adult male participants who were Shaanxi adult male aged 20 ∼ 50, which were collected by using the 3D automatic measurement, 3D interactive measurement and manual measurement. We compared the data of the 3D automatic measurement with those of the 3D interactive measurement and the manual measurement. From the results of the analysis, we can draw the following conclusions: (1) Deviation between the manual measurement and the 3D scanning measurement existed obviously, which cannot be ignored; (2) In the 3D automatic measurement, as the result of the deviation of the identification to the bone location, the measurement data must be checked and modified interactively; (3) The posture of the participant has a significant efect on the measurement data, and the specified basic stance will affect the measurements of shoulder, breast and waist. Therefore, the scanning posture should be standardized based on the need of the study. For example the stance with feet together can make the height measurement more accurate; (4) Many factors would interfere with the accuracy of the manual measure and result the difference with 3D measurement, such as the breathing and posture of the participants, and the measurement skill, experience, position mark etc. (5) There is a linear relation between the manual measurement and the 3D scanning measurement. By establishing the linear regression model the measurement data can be forecasted and calculated.

In this study, the technique of Kansei engineering was used to assess the emotion space of bra. Sixty styles of Wacoal high-quality bra were regarded as stimuli. Fifteen pairs of adjectives and four pairs of phases on color, pattern, style, preference were selected to prepare the questionnaire according to the Semantic Differential method: “modern-classical”, “vulgar-noble”, “charming-charmless”, “intellectual- rustic”, “painted-refreshing”, “active-serious”, “restrained-inflated”, “luxury-frugal”, “lovely-unlovely”, “personality-popular”, “cumbersome-simple”, “sweet-not sweet”, “romantic-actual”, “mature-naive”, “sexy-not sexy”, “good color-bad color”, “good pattern-bad pattern”, “good style-bad style”, and “like- dislike”. Five scales were set for each pair of phase. The survey was conducted among the undergraduate college students from Xi'an Polytechnic University. The data from the survey were analyzed using factor analysis and cluster analysis. Four factors were extracted and labeled as “personality”, “age”, “taste”, “fashion”. The results also indicated that color was the most important factor when designing a bra, especially the base color of the bra, which decided the basic emotion of the bra.