ABSTRACT
Comfort is vital in sportswear design. Previous research focused on the thermo-physiological comfort of modal blended fabric by examining its physical and thermal properties, neglecting comprehensive wear trials. This study compared the perceived comfort of two sportswear samples: polyester fabric and modal blended fabric. Ten participants (mean age =22.4) wore the samples in random order during two trials. Each trial involved 25 min of treadmill running at a self-selected speed in a laboratory with a room temperature of 23.5 ± 1°C and 50% humidity. Heart rate, blood lactate level, skin temperature, perceived exertion, self-reported comfort, sportswear weight change, and fabric properties were recorded. Results showed that the blended fabric offered superior comfort despite the polyester fabric demonstrating better moisture transfer. This suggests that fabric composition and absorbency contribute to comfort and moisture transmission. Future studies should explore fabric structures and their impact on comfort in modal blended fabric using comprehensive human trials
Conclusion
The effects of sportswear composition and fabric layer structure on athletes’ physiological change and perceived comfort were examined. Our results suggested that fabric composition and layer structure affect wearing comfort, and that comfort measure is observed to be more sensitive to the differences in material use and layer structure design. Sample 2, the three-layer blended mixture fabric resulted in better comfortability possibly due to improved moisture transportation and absorption as reported in past study. The presence of regenerated fibre in a 3-layer structure appears to be the differential factor distinguishing the sportswear in subjective comfort ratings in this study. Furthermore, standardising data collection with a larger sample size can improve the accuracy and power of the study. It is recommended to further investigate the effect of layers in fabric structure on wearing comfort.