Woven fabric with moisture management properties

Abstract

A technique allowing manufacturers to produce woven moisture management fabrics with good moisture transfer properties is based upon a model of the fabric construction, thereby avoiding a manufacturing trial-and-error process. An initial woven fabric design including hydrophilic and hydrophobic yarns are modeled, the warp and weft yarns generally lying in a plane of the fabric. By orthographic projection onto respective planes substantially parallel to the plane of the fabric, a first view and an opposing second view of a unit cell of the model is produced. If the total projected area of hydrophobic yarn on one of the first and second views is between 40% and 70% of the total projected area, and total projected area of hydrophilic yarn on the other of the first and second views exceeds 50% of the total projected area, then a fabric according to the fabric design will have near optimum moisture wicking properties and is manufactured to the design. Otherwise, in an iterative process, one of the factors in the model is varied and the design steps repeated.