Thermal human modelling for functional clothing design

Abstract

Functional and smart clothing has been an up-and-coming product for the fashion industry. The human model or mannequin, which is a bridge between customer's physical information and design, utilization, has vital importance as an practical design tool. The physiological information of the human body may be increasingly needed in funtional product develop process. The traditional geometric human models (G-model), which convey anthropometric messages, such as body shape, body volume and measurements, may be promoted to functional human model. Thermal function is highlighted in this study, based upon an emphasized potential of developing new thermal functional clothing for health enhancement and rehabilitation purpose. Based on the data acquired from latest infrared (IR) technology and 3D body scanning, the internal relationship among physically anthropometric parameters and physiological properties like body temperatures had been found. Systematic approaches on constructing visualised, quantified and individualized 3D thermal human modelling (Ti-model) with physiological features and pathophysiologic features had been accomplished. The Ti-model with physiological features accurately reflect the real thermal physiology of the human body which can be directly used for thermal related functional product development, especially for functional clothing. It will provide more efficienct and accuract solutions for 3D functional design, 3D pattern making, 3D virtual fitting and manufacturing. The Ti-model with pathophysiologic features set up a platform for people and their health care providers, which provided visualised and quantified pathophysiologic information for health status monitoring and medical diagnoses. The exact location and area of the lesions of the human body is demonstrated with accurate size and dimension, which is necessary when developing functional and smart clothing with rehabilitation or treatment purposes and can be directly adapted to 3D printing technology with efficiency and accuracy. The average 2D IR images and average 3D thermal human modelling (Ta-model) have been set up, which provides physiological information in quantification and visualization format. The scientific meaning of average IR images and Ta-model contributed advancements on the thermal physiology study to 2D and 3D epoch. The clinical meaning of it was to set up 2D and 3D thermal objective of reference to be comparable with individual's IR images and Ti-model to detect the invisible abnormity of individuals for healthcare and disease monitoring. As a bridge over thermal physiological science and thermal related ergonomic application, this multi-disciplinary study greatly broadens the field of vision for the human being to understand their thermal related physiological and pathophysiologic features from one-dimension, two-dimension and three-dimension.