[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith temperatures dropping across the Lower Mainland, one of the foremost thoughts on people’s minds is how to stay warm. For the designers of technical apparel, this is an ongoing preoccupation.
A new partnership between SFU Environmental Physiologist Matthew White and Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) will study the performance of new MEC cold-weather designs.
White stated, “The goal of thermal testing winter wear is to optimize the performance of the clothing and the thermal comfort of the individual.”
Participants in this study will walk on a treadmill in a climatic chamber that is at a temperature of -8˚C for 30 minutes. While walking, they will have their body temperatures, surface heat loss, and metabolic rates monitored and compared with their pre- and post-exertion levels. This information will also be compared against the participant’s own perceived comfort.
“During our testing [of] the cold chamber we get thermal comfort ratings,” said White. “So we try variants of a given piece of clothing and see if the performance or thermal comfort ratings are better or worse for a given garment.
“We can compare that to the heat loss responses to see whether or not the subjective assessments of a winter garment are the same as what the physiological or heat loss data telling us.”
On the horizon for White is the building of a new climatic chamber that will allow testing across a broader range of temperatures, from -50˚C to 50˚C. While the weather in the Lower Mainland never reaches these extremes, they want to understand how the body reacts to these additional stresses, and develop technical outerwear that can meet these challenges.
According to White, a benefit of building this new chamber is that it will allow for students to be trained in the methods required to conduct thermal testing, which has high industry demand but few qualified individuals.
Currently, Canadian companies have to ship their garments to Kansas State University to get tested for thermal performance. The ultimate goal in building this chamber, aside from being able to conduct further explorations into environmental physiology, would be for Canadian companies to be able to send their garments to SFU for testing.
