For advertising special properties of clothing items, many manufacturers and retailers are already using independent certificates and certifications through neutral institutions such as the Hohenstein Institute. The experts from the Swabian testing and research centre also offer a comprehensive range of internationally established testing services for one of the most essential quality characteristics of all types of clothing – wear comfort.
These allow objective analysis and evaluation of characteristic values which are important for the perception of comfort. The measurement values determined in the laboratory can be represented by a wear comfort vote which can be understood without any expert knowledge. This creates more transparency and comparability when buying textiles – for end consumers as well as for other users such as buyers from leasing firms or public procurement personnel.
The Hohenstein Institute is one of the pioneers in the field of quantitatively determining wear comfort, which is the interaction between the human body, the climate and the clothing worn. Many of the test methods, measurement devices and standards which are globally valid today are also the result of the Hohenstein researchers and their decades of experience. The evaluation of wear comfort of clothing is based on two central influential factors – the thermal-physiological properties as well as the skin sensorial characteristics.
The thermal-physiological aspects include heat insulation and moisture management, meaning how well the textiles will keep the wearer warm in defined wearing situations while at the same time storing sweat or wicking it away from the body. The measurements for this include water vapour resistance as a measure of breathability, sweat buffering and sweat transport as well as drying time of textile materials. The skin sensorial quality provides information about how the textile material feels on the skin, for example whether it will stick to the skin uncomfortably during sweating or if it is too stiff to suitably adapt to the wearer's body shape.
Product comparison made easy
The wear comfort vote also developed at Hohenstein provides an overall evaluation of the comfort properties of textile materials. The grading scale from 1 (very good) to 6 (insufficient) corresponds to the German school grading system, using certain formulas to provide a clear representation of the measurement results from the laboratory tests. The characteristic values and parameters which are decisive for the physiological comfort are weighted differently depending on the intended use of the test samples – functional sports clothing for example requires different formulas than fabrics which are used for protective clothing.
Comfort therefore depends on the different situations the wearer is exposed to: At lower ambient temperatures and with only little physical activity the clothing primarily has to have adapted thermal insulation and good breathability to obtain a good wear comfort vote. As the wearer perspires more as a result of rising ambient temperature and increasing activity, the thermal insulation has to be lower and the textile material should be more capable of buffering the increased accumulation of sweat.
Large amounts of sweat due to very high ambient temperatures and/or a high level of physical activity have to be effectively absorbed by the fabric and transported away from the body as quickly as possible. The clothing should also dry quickly to prevent the wearer from getting cold during rest phases. The textile should also feature optimum skin sensorial properties for all conceivable wearing situations in order to obtain a good wear comfort vote.
At the point of sale the wear comfort vote can, for example, be clearly advertised by marking the product with the Hohenstein Quality Label. As this label also allows other functional properties such as UV protection factor, antimicrobial effect or dirt-repellent and odour-inhibiting finishes to be tested and certified, customers receive a comprehensive statement about the quality characteristics of an item at a glance.
From the idea to a successful product
Apart from the wear comfort vote for product marketing, the clothing physiology laboratory tests also provide targeted support for manufacturers with the development of textiles, for example when it comes to ideally adapting the materials to different climate conditions or specific areas of use such as athletic activities.
During the new development of clothing, exploratory measurements can initially be carried out with a large amount of textile samples to determine particularly important indicators for the end product, allowing unsuitable textiles to be excluded from the outset. Sweat wicking properties for sports textiles would be an example for such an indicator. This is followed by the verification of wear comfort on a few material samples of the new product. In another step the ready manufactured garments can be examined with the help of the thermal manikin ‘Charlie’, which can be used to simulate body movements and different skin temperatures for each area of the body.
Depending on the intended use of the garments, further laboratory tests on human test subjects can be practical. They simulate the specific wearing situation and correlate the measurement results from the fabric tests with those of the wear trials. To allow scientific reproduction of the ambient conditions for certain areas of use of the clothing, the examinations with the thermal manikin as well as the wear trials with the human test subjects take place in a climatic chamber where factors such as temperature, air movement and humidity can be regulated individually.
