Comparative study between DSC and two complementary performance evaluation methods for PCM-treated textiles

Evaluation of thermoregulation performance of textiles incorporated with phase change materials (PCMs) has long been dependent on differential scanning calorymetry (DSC). However, some parameters like the time required for reaching the steady state and the effect of multiple layering cannot be characterized by calorimetric methods. In this paper, Newton cooling law was fitted to the temperature-time graphs of PCM-treated and untreated fabrics obtained by a digital data-logger. By definition, lower values of a in Newton cooling law associates with higher thermoregulation effect. The effect of using different layers as well as thermoregulation efficiency of PCM-treated fabrics were investigated by this method. Thermal imagining was another method employed to calculate thermoregulation percentage (TP) of the fabrics exposed to an infrared, IR, light source. The temperature-time graphs obtained by an IR camera were populated, and the corresponding TP percentages were calculated by image analysis. At the end, the results obtained by two suggested methods were qualitatively compared with DSC.