INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECT OF FABRIC STRUCTURE ON SURFACE TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN WEFT-KNITTED FABRICS USING THERMAL IMAGING TECHNIQUE

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the surface temperature distribution in several single and double jersey weft-knitted fabrics. Plain knitted fabrics as well as those with, double cross-tuck, cross-tuck, double cross-miss, and cross-miss pattern together with plain rib and interlock structures were under consideration in term of their structural differences. In order to investigate the temperature distribution in produced samples, all the fabrics were placed on a 35 degrees C adjusted hot plate instrument and thermal images were captured by an infrared thermal camera. The results revealed that the presence of tuck stitches in single jersey weft-knitted fabrics increase the air permeability due to the increasing the fabrics' porosity, which in turn leads to decrease their thermal resistance as compared with plain knitted structure. On the other hand, addition of miss stitches in single jersey knitted structures would decrease the thickness of fabrics and improves their heat transfer ability. The obtained results, from rib and interlock knitted structures, suggested their lower heat conductivity in comparison to the single jersey knitted samples.