The coolest thing in office wear: Adjustable temperature clothing
Smart clothes adapt so you are always the right temperature
By Hal Hodson New Scientist
Just too hot; a touch too cold. Working in an office building can be
a temperature roller coaster, with the dictatorship of air-conditioning
systems seeming able to keep people too hot and cold simultaneously.
Help is at hand. Researchers from across the US funded by ARPA-E –
the research arm of the US Department of Energy — are developing clothes
that can change their thermal properties to adapt to the environment and
wearer’s body. By changing its makeup or shuttling heat to and from the
body, the clothing aims to make people comfortable in a wide range of
external temperatures.
Heat energy can move in three ways: through conduction, whereby the
atoms in materials pass energy to each other; convection, whereby
high-energy atoms move through the environment; and radiation, whereby
heat energy moves as electromagnetic waves. Clothing can control heat by
changing how much radiation it allows to escape the body or how easily
air can circulate.
Alon Gorodetsky’s team at the University of California at Irvine is
aiming to control radiative heat. “We’re drawing inspiration from squid,
from cephalopods, that can do these amazing camouflage displays,” he says.
Squid can modify how they reflect visible wavelengths of light,
using a cocktail of proteins in their skin. The team is adapting the
technique to longer, infrared wavelengths that carry heat. “We are
leveraging that for materials that can regulate the thermal emissions of
an object,” says Gorodetsky, who won’t yet reveal how his team
implements cephalopod-like radiation control. His team is partnering
with U.S. firm Under Armour, which makes base layers for sports clothing.
Meanwhile, Jintu Fan’s team at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.,
is taking a different approach by controlling the circulation of warm
and cold air through a network of miniscule tubes embedded in an
undershirt. “On top, you can wear whatever you want to,” says Fan.
Temperature sensors in the vest monitor the skin, pumping in warm or
cool air as required. “It’s like a mini air-conditioning system, but
next to your body,” says Fan.
An alternative approach is to augment the body’s own ability to shed
heat. To do this, Roy Kornbluh and his colleagues at nonprofit research
company SRI International are focusing on the body’s glabrous, or
hairless, areas. In mammals, these areas act like a car radiator,
helping heat escape from the body. In humans, the palms of the hands and
soles of the feet are particularly important. “These tissues are the
body’s radiator,” says Kornbluh. “We’re just augmenting it.”
Based in Menlo Park, Calif., his team is building prototype shoes
that incorporate a heat pump made from a kind of plastic which is very
good at transferring heat. This allows them to pull heat out of the body
through the sole of the foot when it’s hot, and to push heat in when
it’s cold.
“We believe we can make something that’s relatively unobtrusive
— you might not even notice that it’s a special shoe,” says
Kornbluh. “Hopefully, within a couple of months we’ll have our first
visual prototypes out.”
It should be noted that clothing that controls heat is not new. But
up to now, it has only appeared in bulky or uncomfortable garments for
the military, aerospace and emergency services, or in lab experiments.
Astronauts wear a temperature-regulating suit inside their spacesuits
that uses liquid to move heat around — but this is heavy. ARPA-E has
invested $30 million to make systems that are comfortable to wear in
everyday life.
There’s a bigger picture to clothing that adapts to keep us
comfortable — it has the potential to save huge amounts of energy.
Keeping office temperatures within a tight range creates a big demand on
resources, with air-conditioning systems accounting for 13 percent of
energy used in the US. Clothes that can adapt and keep us comfortable
would allow that control to be loosened.
“If you can expand that temperature band by a couple of degrees in
each direction and people wear clothing that controls comfort on the
individual, you can save 1 or 2 percent of all energy in the U.S.,” says
Gorodetsky. “That’s a huge number. Even a tiny fraction of that would be
huge.”
“ARPA-E wants to reduce energy usage in the US — that only works if
a lot of people are wearing these,” says Kornbluh. “We want everyone to
be able to wear these, just like you have a smartphone with you. +
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
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*================================================ Duane Whittingham -
N9SSN (ARES/RACES, EmComm, Skywarn & Red Cross)
http://www.radiodude.info ================================================*
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