Inese Ziemele

Integration of Optical Fibres into Textile Products

There have been developed a children’s smart clothing prototype reacting to microclimate changes by signalling with the help of an optical fibre fabric output interface and a mother’s purse receiving the given data via wireless communication and displaying it on an LCD screen. During the research, the optical fibre fabric was tested in order to determine its reaction to external stimuli and define its layout within clothes. Child jacket’s logic was based on Arduino LilyPad. On the other hand, AVR microcontroller was used in pursue, which yielded a more economical and compact solution, although it was not as developer-friendly as LilyPad.

Comfort in Sportswear

The study specifies the sports clothing wearer comfort requirements for sportswear. Two essential components of comfort are considered – physiological and physical comfort. Comfort level for non-professional sportswear has been determined analysing the thermophysiological comfort, as well as the level of physical comfort. The research resulted in development of the algorithm for prediction of physiological and physical comfort in sportswear. The athlete’s thermophysiological comfort is predicted by measuring experimentally the thermal resistance and water-vapour resistance for specimens of fabrics of a sportswear design in laboratory. Physical comfort in a sportswear style and the factors influencing it were determined first determining the typical movements of an athlete in the tested sportswear style.