Characterization of the contacting area of spacer fabric under spherical compression

Abstract

Spacer fabrics have been developed into a variety of special textile mattress products due to their outstanding pressure distribution performance. It may be that the contacting area of spacer fabrics can be expanded under spherical compression. The total compression force and distance curve is currently used to test the compression of spacer fabrics; however, there are few detailed reports about expanding the contacting area under the spherical intender. Therefore, this paper developed a test method for the contacting area between the spacer fabric and the spherical indenter under spherical compression. The spherical indenter was specially designed by using serial resistors method. The contacting area was easily obtained by detecting the resistance change through 12 resistors pasted on the surface of the spherical indenter and calculating the surface of the spherical indenter under dynamic movement. This method can be used to effectively characterize the pressure-relief property of textile soft materials in pad materials.