Comparative analysis of thermal and wet comfort between novel phase-change protective firefighting suit and its common counterpart

Abstract

The superb firefighting garment is the critical guarantee to protect firefighters from burn harm. Despite intensive effort has been devoted to the inflammability of firefighting suit prepared with the novel PCM, its comfort satisfaction is rarely studied. Thus, the thermal and wet comfortability of PCM-firefighting suit and its common counterpart were contrastively analyzed to clarify the effects of PCM on the wear comfort. Results of correlation analysis and partial correlation analysis through SPSS showed that PCM-firefighting suit was more suitable for the harsh environment of high temperature and humidity due to the improved over-all performance than its common counterpart. The paper sheds a promising light on the future design and construction of high performance firefighting garment integrated with excellent inflammability and wear comfort.