Pressure Model of Elastic Fabric for Producing Pressure Garments

Abstract

This paper develops an objective method of drafting pressure garments to provide predetermined skin-and-garment interfacial pressures on patients. To predict interfacial pressure induced by different sizes of pressure garments on a particular curved surface of the human body, the relationship between the tensile properties of an elastic fabric, the curvature of the contoured surface, and the skin-and-garment interfacial pressure can be formulated in a mathematical expression. Tubular garment samples are prepared from an elastic fabric, and their circumference is measured on the upper limb of a human subject before and after compression. Thus, the compression factor on the upper limb is worked out and used to predict the size of an elastic fabric reduction for the required skin-and-garment interfacial pressure. By measuring the interfacial pressure on five human subjects with the Oxford pressure monitor MKII, the required interfacial pressure is obtained with a very small variance σ2 in the actual performance of the tubular garment.