TECH

Ames lab wants to make smarter clothes

Matthew Patane
mpatane@dmreg.com
Rui Li, a research assistant at Iowa State, uses a cone calorimeter to test the thermal degradation of a fabric Monday, April 11, 2016.

There's a lab in Ames where the researchers are setting fabrics on fire.

Some materials go up quickly in a plume of smoke. Others take a bit longer to burn.

One floor down in a separate lab, the research team has access to a mannequin that can sweat. A chamber with a treadmill in one corner can simulate temperature ranges.

"We're always trying to find the extreme condition to mark performance," said Guowen Song, an associate professor at Iowa State University.

Altogether, the labs are part of efforts at Iowa State to understand how materials react in different environments and how people wearing the fabrics are affected by them.

The end goal: better, more effective and more functional clothing.

"We focus on functional textiles and protective clothing," Song said. "The idea here is to study how the clothing system, as a human’s second skin, how that helps us, gives us more in terms of safety, protection, for our health."

Clothing worn by a firefighter or soldier, for example, could be designed to offer more protection against radiation or extreme heat. Or, it could take it a step further, detect those hazards on its own and issue a warning.

Song said those improvements come with potential hangups that need to be studied. If a fabric is made thicker to offer more protection, for instance, it could have negative effects on the person wearing it, such as increased sweating or heat stress.

Guowen Song, an associate professor at Iowa State, stands for a portrait in front of a thermal protective performance tester in the functional textiles and protective clothing lab Monday, April 11, 2016.

The labs are relatively new additions for Iowa State, having only been put in place within the last couple of years. Now, though, Song and his team are part of a nationwide effort to create more functional textiles and clothes.

The U.S. Department of Defense rolled out a new initiative earlier this month that brings together universities, businesses and startup incubators to form the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America Alliance.

Song is leading Iowa State's involvement with the alliance but said the endeavor will require input from multiple areas, such as engineering, fashion designers and kinesiologists.

The alliance's goal is to develop fabrics that do more than just sit on the body. It plans to accomplish this, in part, by integrating more technology into fibers and fabrics.

Yoel Fink, a professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called clothing "underutilized real estate."

"It’s sitting on us, it’s close to us, it’s very intimate with us, but we’re not asking it to do anything. It has a great location, but it’s not actually making use of its location," Fink said.

The reason clothing is limited in its functionality, Fink said, is because it is typically only made from one material at a time.

"If you look at function versus the number of materials involved, it scales very rapidly," he said. "As you begin to integrate more and more materials, you start increasing function."

Fibers mixed with technology, Fink said, could result in materials and clothes that can charge electronics, collect health data or provide climate control, among other possibilities.

"Your fiber today can do one thing. In 12 months it’s going to be able to two things. Twelve months beyond it’s going to be able to do four things," Fink said.

The advanced fabrics partnership is backed by about $317 million in funding, according to a news release. The Department of Defense put up $75 million, with the remainder coming from investments and cost-sharing efforts made by the alliance's other partners.

MIT is acting as the headquarters for the advanced fabrics collaboration.