Abstract:

The main aim of this paper is to look into the relationship between the structure and air permeability of a woven fabric, and discuss the possibility of the prediction of fabric air permeability. With respect to the relationship between the air permeability and structure of woven fabrics it is not possible to describe fabric only by its porosity. Generally porosity indicates how many air gaps a textile material contains. For a description of airflow through textile materials, further details about the configuration of pores in textiles (the pore size, shape, texture, arrangement etc.) are very important. In this paper the influence of the type of weave is eliminated by using only fabrics with a plain weave, where inter-yarn pores have approximately the same shape. The size of these pores, however, varies considerably, which has a significant influence on the air permeability of the fabric. This fact complicates the possibility of the prediction of air permeability.