Heat and moisture transfer in sol-gel treated cotton fabrics

Cotton fabrics have been treated by sol-gel processes in order to produce an inorganic coating on fibres, able to modify their thermal conductivity under an irradiating flow. To this aim, fabric specimens with different silica content have been tested following the ISO 6942 standard in order to establish the effect of the coating on coupled heat and moisture transfer through the cotton fibres. The collected results have been compared with those obtained by an optimized method using a cone calorimeter as the heating source. By this latter approach, it has been demonstrated that sol-gel cotton treated fabrics with high moisture uptake possess a significantly lower thermal conductivity with respect to cotton alone.