Research and Development BranchIn an effort to establish a relationship between the length of time a garment will keep the wearer dry and laboratory tests of the fabric from which that garment was made, the study described in this report was undertataken. Since the rainroom has been recognized as a valid testing device, a correlation between rainroom results and data obtained by the much simpler and more economical laboratory tests should in most cases furnish an accurate method of predicting the performance of a garment under conditions of actual wear. This study shows that it is possible to estimate from the results of laboratory penetration tests the most probable rainroom protection time of a fabric treated with a durable water-repellent compound.

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