With the development of the social economy and the improvement of people’s living standards, outdoor sports are becoming more and more popular, which is accompanied by the rise of the functional protective textile market. So, what are outdoor sports? Outdoor sports are a group of sports with adventure or experience in the natural environment as a venue. Sportswear industry apparel products can be divided into outdoor jackets, fleece clothing, ski clothing, and down clothing. Here we discuss the outdoor jacket fabric.
Outdoor jackets need to be waterproof, waterproof, and breathable. There are many kinds of fabrics that meet these characteristics, and in general, they can be divided into three kinds:
- First, water-repellent high-density fabrics, especially microfiber high-density fabrics. These fabrics are thin and durable with great moisture permeability and good drape. They are also soft and windproof, so they are widely used in sports, and outdoor wear. But the main drawback is its poor water resistance.
- The second is the laminated fabric, a waterproof and breathable film represented by Gore-tex, Sympatex, and OMNI-TECH. The membrane contains lots of tiny pores, much smaller than the size of a raindrop, that allow water vapor molecules to pass through, making it waterproof and breathable.
- Third, coated fabric, waterproof, and breathable fabric manufacturers on the market at present are mostly developed on the basis of polyurethane microporous breathable coating, air permeability varies with the thickness of the coating film.
High-density Fabrics
The iconic product of high-density fabrics is Ventile fabric, which was designed by the Shirley Institute in England in the 1940s. This fabric uses high-count, low-twist cotton yarns of Egyptian long-staple cotton in a high-density, heavy-flat fabric, which was mainly used for the British Air Force pilots’ cold and immersion-resistant clothing during the Second World War. When the fabric is dry, the gap between the warp and weft yarns becomes larger, about 10 microns, which can provide a highly moisture-permeable structure; when rain or water drenches the fabric, the cotton yarn expands, making the gap between the yarns reduced to 3 to 4 microns. This closed-hole mechanism is combined with a special water-repellent treatment to ensure that the fabric is not further penetrated by rain.
It is a compact fabric made of 100% cotton that prevents water penetration for up to 20 minutes. High-density fabrics have made great progress with the development of microfibers. The gap between microfibers in the dry state is much smaller than that of ordinary fibers, so the compact fabric made of microfibers has the function of wet expansion. Nowadays, high-density waterproof, and moisture-permeable fabrics are mostly ultrafine polyester or nylon fiber fabrics. The water pressure between fibers and yarns can be resistant to 9.8-14.7kPa. Combined with super water-repellent finishing technology, the waterproof and moisture-permeable properties and wearing comfort can be greatly improved.
Laminated fabrics
When it comes to laminated fabrics, we have to mention GORE-TEX fabric, which is a fabric with three major properties: waterproof, breathable, and windproof. Its appearance allows the two seemingly contradictory characteristics of waterproof and breathable to merge. The waterproof effect is achieved through sealing, and the breathable effect is achieved through a chemical replacement reaction, and it also has a windproof and warm function. GORE-TEX membrane is the core of all GORE-TEX products, featuring up to 9 billion micro-pores per square inch, each with a diameter of less than one twenty-thousandth of a drop of water.
No external moisture can pass through the film, and the wearer is protected from rain and snow. The size of the micro-pores is 700 times larger than water vapor molecules, so sweat can easily evaporate through the micro-pores, ensuring dryness and comfort. This technology ensures that sweat can evaporate smoothly to the outside world while being waterproof. In addition, an oleophobic substance is added to the film to prevent body oil or repellent. This prevents damage to the film from body oils or insect repellents, making it a better, more durable garment.
Coated fabrics
Coated fabrics can be divided into two kinds: hydrophilic coating and microporous coating fabric (TU and TPU). A hydrophilic coating is a coating applied to the surface of a fabric that is waterproof because it covers all the gaps in the fabric. If there are hydrophilic chain segments on the polymer chain, the content and arrangement are appropriate, they can interact with water molecules. With the help of hydrogen bonds and other intermolecular forces, the adsorption of water molecules on the high humidity side, through the polymer chain hydrophilic gene group transferred to the low humidity side of the desorption. This allows the surface of the fabric to be directly waterproof, such as TEFLON. Coated fabrics are generally simple to process and are characterized by little moisture permeability and little water pressure resistance. Due to the limitations of raw materials, technology, and the method itself, it has not been able to solve the contradiction between moisture permeability, air permeability, water pressure resistance, and water washing resistance.