A test device to characterize cold-contact protective performance of fabrics

Workers are exposed to skin frostbite in extremely cold environments, especially in contact with cold surfaces. They must wear cold-resistant clothing/gloves to avoid frostbites. However, there was a lack of an accurate method to evaluate the cold-contact protective performance (CPP) of fabrics. In view of this, a test device was developed to simulate the cold-contact exposure by controlling cold-contact temperature and pressure. Then, a frostbite prediction model was proposed to predict the time to skin-frostbite (TSF) as an index for characterizing the CPP. It was found that the standard deviation of cold-contact temperature fluctuated within 0.03°C to 0.51°C in the same second, and the coefficient of variations of the TSF were from 1.35% to 6.97%, indicating that the device presents good stability, reliability, reproducibility. The TSFs for different fabric systems ranged from 35 s to 419.33 s, mostly depending on the fiber type, the thermal resistance, the thickness of fabric and the air content in the fabric. Finally, it was concluded that the proposed device provides a scientific and realistic measurement of CPP of fabrics.