The Science of sport
Sportswear suppliers are always on the hunt for the latest in performance fabric technology. Ragtrader asked research institute CSIRO to break down some of their latest breakthroughs.
Electronic Textiles, Dr Richard Helmer
The CSIRO has been working with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) to develop new interactive textiles - or wearable body-mapping garments - to help athletes improve their skills.
Body mapping garments are used to sense the positions of limbs to monitor and enhance performance in training. Physiological monitoring can also be achieved with electronics intimately integrated into the textiles and the data wirelessly transmitted to a computer for display.
The Australian netball team is now utilising a new interactive sleeve that embraces the arm and hand they use to shoot goals. To help players find their ideal shot-making rhythm and motion, the system plays a series of beats in-sync with their arm and wrist movements as they take a shot.
The beats are triggered as the limbs move through certain positions. If the motion is 'correct' - ie indicative of a more successful natural action - the beats, which sound like parts of a disco drum rhythm, describe a recognisable pattern. This enables the netballer to maintain the dynamics of her natural shot-making action in stressful situations simply by repeating the rhythm in her head. It also gives trainers real-time feedback of her movements, which they can use to optimise her rate of learning.
For amateur boxers, the CSIRO and AIS is developing a garment that registers the force and position of the punches landed so that scoring the match is automatic and the outcome beyond dispute. Research is also being undertaken to develop heating and cooling fabrics with the aim of being used for injury treatment and prevention and to reduce heat stress in athletes and others.
Many of the developments for sports have application in other fields such as the military and for hazardous occupations such as firemen. CSIRO is also developing a rechargable textile battery for the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) that will be entirely flexible and constitute part of the soldiers uniform to save weight and space. Novel textiles in the uniform may also generate the electricity to recharge the battery through the soldiers' motion.
Quick Dry Merino, Dr Ron Denning
Wool is perceived as being slow to dry and therefore unsuitable for many applications such as sportswear, where rapid drying is an advantage. The drying time of a fabric is a function of the amount of water held in the fabric and the rate of transfer of water vapour to the surrounding environment.
The addition of stain or water repellent finishes has been shown to reduce the amount of water retained in a fabric. In a project funded by Australian Wool Innovation, new generation stain blockers were used to reduce the drying time by up to a factor of three for machine wash wool, depending on the machine wash treatment and the fabric structure and weight.
The greatest reduction was observed for hand washed Chlorine/Hercosett fabrics with the drying time reducing from approximately 700 minutes to 200 minutes. Natural wool shows a 25 per cent reduction in drying time. Spin drying the fabrics reduces the amount of water retained in the fabric, a reduction of 20 to 25 per cent water was observed between the control and treated fabrics. Treated wool shows similar drying time to the equivalent polyester fabric and much faster drying than cotton.
Most quick dry synthetic garments are very light weight, so they retain very little water. Quick dry merino, at similar weights, also retains little water. The addition of a new generation stain resist agent gives merino wool the same drying properties as polyester, with the added comfort and performance benefits of merino wool.
By Ragtrader staff