Natick tests material for US snowboarding team uniform

29 Jan '14

4 min read

Gibson performed Dynamic Moisture Permeation Cell testing on swatches of Burton's proprietary clothing. After he developed the DMPC in the NSRDEC laboratories, the Army obtained a U.S. patent for the device and test method in 1999, which has since become a widely used standard in the outdoor clothing industry.

"They didn't even tell me what they were," Gibson said of the swatches. "You're just measuring how much water vapor goes through, how breathable it is.

"I have a set of standards that I test, and then I usually have whatever the company sends, and then I just provide them (with results that compare them to other fabrics)."

When he's not monitoring the commercial market, Gibson works with his Natick team on garments for American warfighters. He is especially proud of advances NSRDEC has made in flame-resistant and chemical-protective materials.

"That's, I think, been one of our big contributions over the past decade," Gibson said. "We've made a lot of advances here at Natick, which have been transferred to industry or are going into prototype garments that we're developing now."

Meanwhile, Gibson will continue to test for companies such as Burton in hopes of coming across materials that can benefit U.S. service members in the future.

"Things have gotten continuously better," said Gibson, "and people understand how to combine different materials together in different environments, even within the same garment."

NSRDEC

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