No abstract

The sound absorption properties of materials are important not only for noise reduction, but also for controlling reverberation time for speech intelligibility in rooms and for promoting fuller sound in concert halls. Industrial textiles are focusing on these materials' application for sound absorption, thus new textiles were to be examined in relation to this performance. Micro-fiber fabric has fine fibers and a high surface area and it has been used in such applications as wipers, thermal insulator, filters or breathable layers. It can be also used for sound absorption. This paper examines the possibility of using micro-fiber fabrics as sound absorbent materials. We tested the sound absorption coefficients of five micro-fiber fabrics and one regular fiber fabric by the reverberation room method. The results showed that the micro-fiber fabrics' sound absorption is superior to that of conventional fabric with the same thickness or weight, and the micro-fiber fabrics' structure was found to be important for controlling sound absorption according to sound frequency. Fabric density was found to have more effect than fabric thickness or weight on sound absorption, and the Noise Reduction Coefficient increases to its highest value at a fabric density of about 0.14 g/cm3, and it decreases thereafter.

Smart clothing is a "smart system" capable of sensing and communicating with environmental and the wearer's conditions and stimuli. A comprehensive review is presented on the research and developments related to smart clothing including technology developments, human aspects in smart clothing, and the applications. Recent smart clothing technology can be summarized as a tendency toward textilebased technology for each component: interface, communication, data management, energy management, and integrated circuits. Human aspects in smart clothing, even though some areas were not fully covered, were dealt with in terms of usability, functionality, durability, safety, comfort, and fashion. General applications of smart clothing developed so far include bio-monitoring clothing, MP3 player-adopted clothing, and photonic clothing.

Melamine formaldehyde microcapsules containing octadecane are synthesized by the interfacial polymerization method, and the size, shape, and thermal storage/release prop erties of the synthesized microcapsules are analyzed by FTIR, SEM, and DSC. Polyester fabrics are then coated with the microcapsules under various conditions of concentration and time/temperature by the knife-over-roll (KOR) and screen printing (SP) methods. The thermal, mechanical, and physical properties of the untreated and treated fabrics are evaluated to identify the best adhesive method. The mean diameter of the microcapsules ranges from 1 to 1.5 μm, and their shapes are almost spherical. Under the optimum treatment concentration, temperature, and time, thermal properties after five launderings decrease rapidly, and the bending and shear rigidities of the KOR fabrics are higher than those of the sp fabrics. This means that fabrics coated by sp become less stiff and hard than those by KOR. sp fabrics exhibit higher air permeability and lower hygroscopic properties than KOR fabrics.

To develop a thermostatic fabric, a 100% polyester fabric is treated with octadecane- containing microcapsules by a knife-over-roll coating process. The amount of heat content increases as the concentration of microcapsules increases. and it decreases as the temper ature and time increase. The surfactant treatment at a given microcapsule concentration increases the heat content of the treated fabrics about 56-94%. The durability of the coated microcapsules lasts for about ten launderings. The treated fabric becomes stiffer and less smooth, soft, and full than the untreated fabric, as shown by KES measurements. Wear trials with the untreated and treated garments in a conditioned environment confirm the temperature sensing properties of treated garments. The cooling effect from thermal storage of the octadecane-containing microcapsules is revealed by results showing that the changes in the mean skin and microclimate temperature with the treated garment are less than for those wearing the untreated garment.