Computational fluid dynamic modeling of fabric systems for intelligent garment design

Protective clothing provides laboratory and hazardous matenals workers, fire fighters, military persomel, and others with the means to control their exposure to chemicals, biologica1 materials, and heat souces. Depending on the specific application, the textile matenals used in protective clothing must provide high performance in a nnmber of areas, including impermeahility to hazardous chemicals, hreathability, light weight, low cost, and ruggedness. Models based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have been developed to predict the performance of protective clothing matenals. Such models complement testing by enabling property data from laboratoiy material testing to be used in predictions of integrated multilayer garments under varying environmental conditions.