Prediction of thermal resistance of woven fabrics. Part II: Heat transfer in natural and forced convective environments

The aim of the paper is to observe the effects of convection on the total heat transfer of the fabric. Convective heat transfer through textiles can be simulated with the help of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The first part of this paper has dealt with the mathematical model for predicting the conductive and radiative heat transfer. The second part of the paper describes the use of CFD to simulate the wind tunnel of the instrument. The fabric has been subjected to natural and forced convection. The convective heat transfer coefficients obtained from the simulation were used to find the resistance due to convection. The final values obtained from the model were compared with the values obtained from the thermal resistance measuring instrument fabricated to measure the thermal resistance in natural and forced convective modes. The mathematical model gave excellent prediction in forced as well as natural convective mode when coupled with CFD results.