Smart Textile‐Based Personal Thermal Comfort Systems: Current Status and Potential Solutions

Abstract

Thermophysiological comfort in humans is sought universally but seldom achieved due to biological and physiological variances. Most people in developed parts of the world rely on central heating and cooling systems to achieve thermophysiological comfort which is highly energy-intensive, inefficient, and rarely satisfactory. A potential solution to this issue is a wearable personal thermal comfort system (PTCS) consisting of textile-based temperature and moisture sensors, that can sense the environment and physiology of the wearer, combined with thermal and moisture responsive actuators, and/or heating/cooling devices to provide an individualized thermal environment. Moving thermal regulation away from the built environment to the microclimate surrounding the human body with the use of textiles has the This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2 potential to provide personalized thermal comfort and energy savings. Such a system may employ thermal comfort models and leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning (ML) to understand individuals' comfort requirements in the current environment. Herein, the current state of textile-based active and passive thermophysiological comfort systems/technologies is summarized, including their environmental impact, major thermal comfort models, and factors influencing comfort (such as heat and moisture transfer). Also, active and passive textile-based devices (sensors, actuators, and flexible heating/cooling devices) that may be incorporated into a textile-based wearable PTCS are comprehensively discussed with an emphasis on their advantages, limitations, and future prospects.

Comparative Analysis of Thermophysiological Comfort-Related Properties of Elastic Knitted Fabrics for Cycling Sportswear

“…Among the fabrics considered, the results suggest that fabrics B and D will perform better in heat transport, potentially ensuring better comfort in the case of intense activity when a low amount of energy must be disposed to ensure thermal comfort. This agrees with previous studies and could be due to the thickness and porosity of the fabric, as it provides higher thermal insulation (Tabor, 2020) [49].…”

“…Some characteristics of fabrics B and D are an average to fast wetting and absorption, small spreading area, fast-spreading, and poor one-way transport. In a clothing system, it may be useful to alternate fast absorbent fabrics B/D with fabrics A/C that quickly transport sweat outside, depending on the quantity of sweat generated [ 49 ].…”

A Fabric-Based Textile Stretch Sensor for Optimized Measurement of Strain in Clothing

“…Another possible reason might be that EeonTex TM conductive stretchable fabric is coated/doped with an inherently conductive polymer, making them conductive with quite high resistance. Such conductive polymers have varying resistance by varying the pressure, distance, thickness and stretchability [ 33 , 34 ]. Therefore, further study is needed to investigate the relation between sweat and conductive yarns/fabrics characteristics.…”

Intelligent Polymers, Fibers and Applications

“…A variety of sensing applications is also another well-studied field of intelligent polymers. A variety of applications have been developed taking advantage of moist characteristics of polymers, including humidity sensors, actuators and membranes (which have various applications such as biomimetic fibrous fabrics [ 110 , 112 , 113 ]). Response to humidity means the hydrophilic polymer should have porous networks to form the fiber structure [ 110 ] to let water molecules go through.…”