If it is hot, the fabric will automatically become thinner to keep the body cool; when it is cold, the fabric will thicken itself to keep the body warm. This kind of fabric that breaks the principle of thermal expansion and contraction is really here! What is recommended in this issue is intelligent cold expansion and heat shrinkable fabrics.
What is cold expansion fabric?
This fabric was used at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics and was worn by the US team. Fabrics using this technology will automatically deform when the temperature rises, so that the wearer will not feel overheated. When the temperature drops, the fabric returns to its original form, providing more insulation. A single garment can span 3 seasons, transitioning seamlessly from indoor to outdoor environments.
It is called a self-poofing fabric because of its dynamic isolation changes based on temperature. If it’s too hot, the material stretches, reducing insulation; when the temperature is too cold, the material expands (filling in with air) to increase insulation.
What is the principle of cold expansion fabric?
At the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) results presentation conference, the scientific research team Otherlab demonstrated a temperature-control material that can automatically expand and contract with temperature changes. Based on this theoretical starting point, a small team from Otherlab used the financial support of ARPA-E to develop a fabric they called “thermally adaptive materials”, which is also a cold expansion fabric.
The intelligent cold expansion fabric newly developed by Shanghai Quanxin Weaving New Materials Company of Cosette Group is a fabric developed by combining aerogel and 3D printing technology. Utilizing the principle of aerogel responding to temperature changes, an air layer appears in the middle of a double-layer fabric coated with aerogel when the temperature drops, and the air layer achieves the thermal insulation effect. Since 99.8% of aerogel is air, it can adapt to volume changes caused by temperature changes.�This principle is used to achieve the thermal insulation effect. “3D printing airgel cotton” uses 3D printing layer-adding processing to fill the middle layer between fabrics with silica aerogel. The fabric is thin and has high cold protection properties.
