How much comfort can an infrared-transparent or gating textile buy, and which fabric properties matter?

What it found

A Fanger/ISO 7730 PMV model and a Gagge-style two-node model extended with fabric infrared emissivity and transmittance, solar absorptance and vapour permeability. The no-optics PMV matches an open-source ISO implementation to 0.006 over 144 cases. Indoors without sun, infrared transmittance (0 to 0.8) is worth about 2.4 °C of comfort at 28 °C, more than cutting insulation from 0.7 to 0.3 clo (1.8 °C), but makes a 16 °C room feel 7.3 °C colder; in sun, solar absorptance (7.7 °C span) dominates the infrared properties. Stylised: assumed fabric properties, a parallel-path radiation model with no reference data, and recalled two-node constants.

A figure from its own output

Paper, code and results

• README and method
• Experiments and results
• Code
• Tests

More in Engineered clothing

• How far is the repository's two-node thermal model from an open-source implementation of the Gagge model?Cross-checks garment-thermal's two-node model against pythermalcomfort over 108 conditions: core temperature within 0.25 °C, skin temperature mean 0.6 °C (up to 2.1 °C) apart; a comparison of implementations, not of people.
• Which design choices explain the gap between the repository's two-node model and an open-source Gagge implementation?Switches nine design choices one at a time between garment-thermal's two-node model and pythermalcomfort's: variable skin mass fraction, convection coefficient and vasodilation gain explain most of the 0.58 °C skin-temperature gap; a comparison of implementations, not of people.
• Do the fabric-optics conclusions of the thermal-comfort model survive a different two-node implementation?Adds garment-thermal's fabric optics (infrared transmittance, emissivity, solar absorptance) to the switchable two-node model and re-runs the comparisons under pythermalcomfort's choices: property rankings agree in all four scenarios, sizes within 3% at 28 °C but up to ~2× apart in cool air and in sun; a comparison of implementations, not of people.
• Do the fabric-optics effects on thermal comfort change once the two-node model reaches steady state?The fabric-optics comparison of garment-twonodeoptics run to steady state instead of one hour: the cool-room disagreement between design choices mostly vanishes (stylised).
• Do the closed and open bounds of an infrared-gating textile survive other two-node design choices and steady state?The closed-to-open bounds of an infrared-gating textile from garment-thermal hold under both two-node choice sets and at steady state: opening the gate cools skin by 0.20–0.25 C at 31 C and keeps it 1.4–1.5 C cooler at 16 C; stylised, preliminary.
• What does a thermostat-driven infrared-gating textile do that its fixed closed and open states do not?A skin-temperature-triggered infrared-gating textile with hysteresis and actuation lag settles to a fixed closed or open state under constant rooms (no chatter, lag only delays the start); gains need changing conditions; stylised, preliminary, mostly null.

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.