Performance Fabric Testing Critical for Quality End-Product

Release Date 01.10.09

Editor’s note: This article is featured in the Fall 2009 issue of SDL Atlas Update, the company’s quarterly newsletter. To sign-up to receive the newsletter, send us an e-mail at info@sdlatlas.com.

More textiles today are engineered systems than ever before. They contain natural fibers, man-made fibers, combinations, chemical additives, nontextile layers, and more.

They are all designed to give better performance under a specific set of conditions. These conditions can vary as much as the content of the fabrics do. Many people relate performance fabrics to exercise clothing. While this is a very good example, these specialized fabrics extend far beyond athletic wear.

Performance fabrics include outdoor clothing that is meant to keep you dry in wet conditions, warm in windy conditions, and protected from UV rays when it is sunny. Performance fabrics are used in important professions such as fire fighting and medicine.

Testing these fabrics requires looking beyond the more common tests such as shrinkage, colorfastness, and seam strength. Some technical features are more difficult to test, measure, and quantify. Sometimes several individual tests must be done on different portions of a fabric’s primary feature in order to try to categorize the capability. For example, Moisture Management textiles are often tested for wicking, then drying rate, then absorbency, and so on. It is preferable to measure these multiple criteria at the same time during a single test.

SDL Atlas has recognized the need to continue developing testing techniques to keep pace with the advancement of textile technologies. To this end, we have developed a strong group of products focused on testing performance fabrics. They are led by the Moisture Management Tester (MMT) and Sweating Guarded Hotplate. Other products include the Air Permeability Tester, Hydrostatic Head Tester and a number of other water protection instruments, Flammability Testers, and several personal protection testing instruments.

The MMT has revolutionized the method for evaluating the moisture management properties of fabrics by measuring the most important requirements of these fabrics in a single test and giving the results on each variable. By providing a quick and simple measurement of the dynamic movement of moisture from the skin side of a fabric to the air side, the user receives an easy-to-understand index of the moisture management handling capability of the fabric used in activewear. The relationship of the index to human wearer trials gives the user confidence that the right, reliable attributes are being measured and reported.

Much like the MMT, the Sweating Guarded Hotplate takes several parameters into account during a single test. While the MMT focuses on the liquid moisture movement, the Sweating Guarded Hotplate focuses on the effect of water vapor movement that affects a fabric’s thermal insulation. The ASTM standard for the Sweating Guarded Hotplate tells us, “The thermal resistance and evaporative resistance provided by fabrics, films, coatings, foams, and leathers, including multi-layer assemblies, is of considerable importance in determining their suitability for use in fabricating protective clothing systems.” In this “skin model test,” the instrument simulates the conditions created by a human body so that measurements can be made on the heat and vapor retention or release by a fabric or system of fabrics. Getting the heat and vapor retention of items such as coats, blankets, and technical apparel is important and can significantly impact their ultimate comfort and safety of the end customer. Breathability is one of the many factors outlined in a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology publication for rating and choosing firefighter turnout coats. Breathability indicates the flow of heat and moisture from the skin to the environment by measuring the amount of energy required to maintain a constant suit temperature using the SDL Atlas Sweating Guarded Hotplate.

Outdoor apparel and gear such as tents, awnings, umbrellas, and sails require testing for hydrostatic and air permeability properties. Hydrostatic testing, as provided by the SDL Atlas M018 Hydrostatic Head Tester, also plays an important role in qualification and rating of surgical drapes and clothing for healthcare workers. A publication by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) classifies the barrier performance (protection against blood-borne and liquid-borne pathogens) of surgical gowns, surgical drapes, and other protective apparel for levels 1 through 3 by results using the AATCC test 127 for which the SDL Atlas instrument was designed. SDL Atlas has developed market-leading instruments with excellent testing capabilities for these important parameters.

While performance fabrics require the standard tests of other fabrics, they also require an extra level of specialized testing to measure their engineered properties. SDL Atlas remains committed to supporting new textile technology with innovative testing solutions.