Evaluation and Prediction of the Effect of Fabric Wetting on Coolness

Abstract

As an important parameter of garment comfort, the thermal sensation of fabrics changes with factors such as sweat-induced humidity, making it a crucial area of research. To explore the coolness sensation of fabrics under different humidities, we tested heat transfer between fabrics and skin for 20 different fabrics with varying thermal absorption rates using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation to objectively assess their coolness levels. Subjective evaluation was then obtained by having subjects touch the fabrics and provide feedback, resulting in a subjective evaluation of their coolness levels. We compared the objective and subjective evaluations and found them to be highly consistent (R2 = 0.909), indicating accurate objective classification of fabric coolness levels. Currently, random forest regression models are widely used in the textile industry for classification, identification, and performance predictions. These models enable the prediction of fabric coolness levels by simultaneously considering the impact of all fabric parameters. We established a random forest regression model for predicting the coolness of wet fabrics, obtaining a high accuracy between predicted and tested thermal absorption coefficients (R2 = 0.872, RMSE = 0.305). Therefore, our random forest regression model can successfully predict the coolness of wet fabrics.