The Comfort of Knitted Materials for Sportswear: A Focus on Air and Water Vapour Permeability

Abstract

Factors such as the growing popularity of sports, changing lifestyles and the increasing number of sporting events contribute significantly to the popularity of sports textiles. Sports textiles play an important role in the performance of athletes, as they need to provide freedom of movement and comfort to the wearer during activity. In this paper, seven conventional and high-performance polyamide and polyester yarns were selected for the development of knitted fabrics for sportswear. The fabrics were manufactured as single jersey and double jersey structures, both with and without incorporated elastane yarn. The fabrics manufactured were tested for mass per unit area, fabric thickness, fabric density, porosity, air permeability and water vapour permeability. The results of the study indicate that the air permeability of all four fabric groups shows a strong correlation with the measured porosity. The average water vapour permeability of single jersey fabrics is significantly higher than that of double jersey fabrics, and the addition of elastane leads to a further reduction. The correlation between the water vapour permeability and the thickness of single jersey, elastane-plated single jersey and double jersey fabrics is negative.