Hump‐Inspired Hierarchical Fabric for Personal Thermal Protection and Thermal Comfort Management

Abstract

Personal protection is critical for firefighters to ensure their safety in an extreme fire environment. However, conventional firefighter uniforms tend to focus on thermal protection and have the bottleneck of lacking personal thermal management. The heat stress caused by poor thermal management inevitably detriments human body health. Here, a hump‐inspired hierarchical fabric (HHF) composed of hierarchical insulation structure and directional water transport is demonstrated for personal thermal protection and thermal comfort management. The results show that the HHF exhibits enhanced thermal insulation ability and endows continuous one‐way liquid flow through distributed sweat‐wicking channels. Compared to conventional firefighter uniform fabrics, HHF shows simultaneously low thermal conductivity (0.0192 W m−1 K−1) in the cross‐plane direction and high breathability and moisture permeability. It is observed that the temperature and relative humidity of the simulated skin covered‐HHF uniform at extreme condition (≈80 °C) are ≈20.6 °C and ≈13.6% lower than that of conventional firefighter uniforms. It is expected that the HHF fabric with exceptional thermal performance can make a significant impact on future development of advanced protection uniform for firefighters.

Integrated Firefighting Textile with Temperature and Pressure Monitoring for Personal Defense

“…The sandwiched structure of two fabrics and arrayed aerogels can achieve thermal insulation function for outstanding thermal protection. 37 As shown in Figure 2d,f andFigure S3, the spinning strategy can realize the large-scale fabrication of these functional yarns; CNT-viscose electrode yarns can be used as electrode for connecting arrayed graphene-coated aerogels, and core−sheath composite yarns work as a sensing layer for endowing spatial pressure detection, respectively. In Figure 2e,g, the CNTviscose electrode yarns show a typical twisted structure with CNT-viscose fibers, and the core−sheath composite yarns exhibit a core-spun yarn structure of a core layer with CNTviscose electrode yarns and an outer layer with wrapped polyimide fibers.…”

Facile and Scalable Fabrication of Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic Janus Fabric for Personal Sweat Monitoring and Perspiration Management

“…In contrast, the water content of the upper layer remained ≈0 as liquid sweat transmission from the upper to the lower surface was driven by asymmetric wettability. [33][34][35][36] In contrast, when the TBY layer faced upward, the water content of the upper layer initially increased to ≈182%, whereas that of the bottom layer remained at ≈0 (Figure 3c). This result indicates the water concentration on the green ink was dropped onto the PBY layer.…”

Self‐Contained Moisture Management and Evaporative Cooling Through 1D to 3D Hygroscopic All‐Polymer Composites

“…These four heat transfer pathways have inspired the development of customer-oriented, energy-saving and moisture-responsive textiles through fiber engineering and garment design. [11][12][13][14] For example, the hierarchical structures of conventional fabrics provide air permeability, sweat-wicking, and moisture dispersal, enabling convection to remove ≈15% of the body's heat. [15] However, the regulation of heat dissipation through this pathway is contingent upon the dimensions of the fibrous configurations and the thermal differentials existing between the internal and external textures.…”