Experimental evaluation of the compression garment produced from elastic spacer fabrics through real human limb

Abstract

Spacer fabrics found vast applications as medical textile due to their intrinsic and unique properties such as good air permeability, breathability, compressibility and comfort. The aim of this study is to utilize weft knitted spacer fabric as pressure garment to apply more uniform interface pressure on limb than common commercial fabrics. Initially, different weft knitted spacer fabrics by varying the spacer fabric thickness (0.8, 1.2 and 1.8 mm) and elastane yarn content (25, 30, 35 and 40%) were produced. Then, mean interface pressure was obtained through conducting the Mannequin test. Based on the Mannequin test results, spacer fabrics with similar applied interface pressure to commercial one were selected to perform human limb test. According to the results, the spacer fabric with the thickness of 1.8[Formula: see text] and elastane yarn content of 25% not only applied interface pressure comparable to commercial fabric, but also exhibited the most uniform interface pressure mapping on human limb among those studied. Also experimental results showed the superior performance of spacer knitted fabrics with elastane yarn than the single jersey knitted fabrics as pressure garments.