Thermal Comfort and Mechanical Analysis of Elastane/Spandex-Free Honeycomb Fabrics for Stretchable Clothing

Stretchable woven clothing owing to its comfort, strength, and stability is an area of increasing interest for scientists nowadays. However, simultaneous analysis of such fabrics with varying interlacement patterns finds a gap. Novel elastic yarns except spandex which often compromises thermo-physiological comfort are also not explored. Hence, this study focuses on the development of woven honeycomb variants using stretchable T-400 yarn. Single ridge, double ridge, and Brighton honeycomb interlacements were combined with three different picking sequences. The sequences consisted of 100% cotton, 1:1, and 2:1 spandex to cotton, respectively. Among thermo-physiological comfort air permeability and overall moisture management were characterized with sensorial comfort. Tensile strength and puncture resistance were also tested to analyze mechanical serviceability. Air permeability exhibited a continuous decrease with increasing structure tightness. Overall moisture management was found 50% higher for double ridge owing to shorter float lengths with interlocking zones providing moisture channels as compared to single ridge. The warmthness index of single ridge fabrics increased to 0.98 with the incorporation of stretchable T-400 yarn. Similarly, a monotonic increasing trend was observed for tensile strength up to 12.61 N with T-400 yarn incorporation. Statistical data analysis also proved the significance with calculated p-values < 0.05.