Development of a flexible wearable thermal textile accessory for winter sports

Abstract

In pursuit of a healthy lifestyle, people are paying more attention to sports activities, even in winter. They are thus seeking high function and maximum comfort to improve their performance. However, cold weather may result in a higher risk of injuries. It is of prime importance to perform warm-up, which can increase body temperature to relieve muscle stiffness and allow improvement of performance. Unfortunately, the traditional approach of wearing multiple thick layers of clothing to keep warm can prevent the easy movement of the body. Therefore, the integration of flexible textile and wearable thermal technology has become a major research initiative in both sports and textile fields. Current attempts by high-tech start-ups and wearable textile enterprises are not able to overcome the hurdle of transforming wearable technology into a fashionable and marketable product. Hence, this paper introduces a design-driven method to develop a flexible wearable thermal textile accessory for winter sports usage. The relationships between thermal textiles, electrical resistance, thermal performance, stretchability, energy consumption, and function stability were evaluated to optimize the thermal textile fabrication. Then, a prototype was produced and its specification was defined. These enable the realization of mass production and provide a blueprint for the future development of wearable textiles.