Title: Identification of the most significant factors influencing thermal comfort using principal component analysis and selection of the fabric according to the apparel end-use (original) (raw)

Identification of the most significant factors influencing thermal comfort using principal component analysis and selection of the fabric according to the apparel end-use In this study principal component analysis was used to analyse knitted fabrics in terms of thermo-physiological comfort properties. Four principal component factors were extracted from the analysis: Slowness of drying, Intrinsic fabric thermal insulation, Fabric porosity and Fabric wicking. The extracted components explain 90% of the variability in the orig- inal thirteen variables, so we can considerably reduce the complexity of the data set by using these components, with only about 10% loss of information. This reduction can be used thereafter for the modeling of fabric thermo-physiological comfort properties and for the selection of the most adequate fabric for particular applications.