Jacket that gets thinner when you sweat could help avoid overheating
The jacket is thicker when it is dry (left) and thinner when it is wet (right)
Xiaofeng Jiang / Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2023
If you constantly find yourself by taking your jacket on and outside when the sun disappears behind the clouds, a material that becomes thinner when you sweat could provide a solution.
Researchers have already developed self-adapting materials that can cool you in hot climates by increasing the amount of heat, in the form of infrared radiation, which the material lets pass. But these materials tend to operate in one direction and are poor to keep people warm in cooler climates.
Xiuqiang Li at the University of Nanjing of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China and his colleagues have developed a jacket that contains a layer that curves when it is dry and deepens when it is wet. This makes the jacket thicker in cooler and thinner environments in hot environments, triggered by a person’s sweat. “Sweating production offers a simpler and timely indicator of the real needs of body heat discipulation,” explains Li.
Clothes have a design similar to ordinary low jackets, but contains a layer of cellulose produced by bacteria, which is then reinforced with polyester to make it strong enough to extend an outer layer of fabric. Li and her colleagues have found that the layer of cellulose, which becomes predictable less curved when drying, can remain fixed at an angle for 12 hours and still works after 200 cycles of cross -to -curve flat.
The team tested the amount of heat that the material has maintained in addition to fabric with different humidity levels. They found that it was as cool as a polyester shirt when it is wet and almost as hot as a downward jacket when it is dry.
These tests were equivalent to bringing the material to the bare skin. “If the material is carried on other layers of clothing, such as a t-shirt, in theory, the humidity of the perspiration generated by the body could impregnate these interior layers to reach the material, potentially still induced its response to a response.
In this spirit, the team aims to develop textiles so that it is hot enough to wear without needing additional diapers.
Li says that the scale of the production of the material should be simple, because bacterial cellulose is easily available and cheap – but the team must first show that it is as durable as ordinary clothes.
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