Standards to Assess Thermal Behaviour of Textile Materials and Role of Thermal Manikins

Source: Textile Review: April 2011

Thermal Comfort of Textile Materials and Its Assessment in dynamic environmental conditions has been discussed in previous two articles. For the correct assessment of the thermal properties, global testing standards are must. These standards are not only useful for thermal assessment but also used for comparison of various products at the same platform and are accepted unambiguously. The article discusses various popular standards used for different products in different environmental conditions. Thermal manikins have proved to be a useful tool in simulation of the human body while testing of thermal properties in varied environmental conditions. Some popular thermal manikins have also been discussed in this article.

Thermal Testing Standards

For a comparison, a reference point is needed, which can be taken as a benchmark to compare the parameters for a given product. Any property or parameter can be evaluated against the standard provided that the standard is developed with consensus and accepted by all. It may be a characteristic, property, or parameter like the length or width of any object or color of any object.

Targeting this objective, the same is followed with the testing standards also. Different material's performance can be tested or evaluated differently, but to keep all the results on one platform and for true judgment, the procedure of testing, specifications, equipment used, testing conditions has to be uniform and well defined.

So, if the test has been conducted by following the standard instructions as described in the procedure, the results will not vary with the change of testing location, person, equipment, etc.