Characterization of Liquid Moisture Transport Performance of Wool Knitted Fabrics

Wool fabric is one of the fabrics normally suitable for autumn—winter garments. With the popularization of air conditioning, however, it is much hotter outdoors than indoors with a large temperature gradient in summer, under which circumstances the wearer finds it easier to sweat out of doors, and feels cold and clammy when entering a room kept at a lower temperature by air conditioning. With the advances in knitting and finishing technology, fine wool knitted fabrics are finding more applications as summer garments. Thus, the design and study of comfortable summer wool knitted fabric is increasing. Wool fiber has a higher vapor moisture absorbency than other natural fibers, such as cotton, linen, and silk, and general synthetic fibers. It also has higher heat releasing and heat absorption properties accompanying moisture absorption and desorption respectively, which strengthens the buffering effect of the clothing between the human body and the surrounding environment. In the present study, different kinds of fabric knitted by wool yarn in a plain structure (W1, W2), and wool yarn matched with polyester yarns (WP1, WP2) or cotton yarns (WC1, WC2) as plating yarn are developed so as to have different liquid water transport properties. Their liquid moisture transport properties are characterized by using the Moisture Management Tester. By fabric design and post-finishing, our aim to create different liquid water transfer and distribution properties in the fabrics was achieved. W2 is poor at spreading liquid in the top and bottom surfaces of the fabric, showing poor liquid transfer properties, and WC1 is the best at spreading liquid in the bottom surface, showing good moisture management properties.