Impact of seam on liquid transmission behaviour of multi-layered ensembles using sweat and water

Abstract

Present study is focussed on the effect of seam on the moisture transmission in liquid form. Behaviour of actual sweat is found to be different from pure water used while evaluating the performance of multilayer clothing systems in seamed and unseamed condition in terms of their in-plane (wetting time) & cross-plane moisture transmission and overall moisture management capacity. Uni-directional seam shows higher wetting time at the inner surface as well as better cross-plane transmittance, and hence better overall moisture management capacity as compared to bi-directional stitched and unseamed fabrics. In all the cases, sweat shows less wetting time than water. Multi-layered ensemble with polyester spacer fabric as middle layer exhibits better overall moisture management properties in comparison to layered ensemble with fleece fabric as middle layer both in seamed and unseamed conditions. Seam type plays a most significant role followed by type of layered ensembles then solution type in affecting the overall moisture management behaviour of seamed ensembles.