Prediction of air permeability of knitted fabric by using computational method

Air permeability is one of the very important factors which need to be considered at the development stage of textile fabrics because it affects the comfort of the clothing. During normal and extreme environmental conditions human body releases heat and the heat can be controlled by the air exchange between the body and clothing microclimate and the external environment; the exchange phenomena depends on the air permeability of the fabric. The air permeability of fabric can be evaluated by both the experimental and computational methods. In this work, a computational method is used for the prediction of air permeability of fabrics. The geometrical model of weft knitted structures was generated by using the actual dimensional parameters of the fabric and was further analysed by applying appropriate boundary conditions. The simulated results obtained from computational analysis were compared to the experimental results. Furthermore, the validated models were further used to predict and analyse the effect of stitch length, stitch density and fibre volume fraction on the air permeability of the fabric.