Textiles, Volume 3, Issue 4 (December 2023) – 4 articles

Textile waste constitutes a significant fraction of municipal solid waste sent to landfill or incinerated. Its innovative management is important to enhance sustainability and circularity. This review aims to present the latest policies and the state-of-the-art technologies in the collection, sorting and recycling of textile waste. Policies at global and regional levels are increasingly made to address the sustainability of the textile industry and integrate the concept of circular economy. They are crucial to driving changes and innovations in current textile waste management. The Internet of Things, big data, blockchain and smart contracts have been proposed to improve transparency, traceability and accountability in the textile waste collection process. They optimize collection routes, and transactions and agreements among stakeholders. The sorting of textile waste using near-infrared spectroscopy, optical sorting and artificial intelligence enables its separation based on composition, color and quality. The mechanical recycling of textiles regenerates fibers with the same or different applications from those of the original fabrics. Fibers have been used for making building and slope protection materials. Chemical recycling depolymerizes waste textiles using chemicals to produce monomers for new textiles or other materials, while biological recycling uses enzymes and microorganisms for this purpose instead of chemicals. Thermal recycling recovers energy and fuels from textile waste through pyrolysis, gasification and hydrothermal liquefaction. These innovations may have the drawbacks of high cost and scalability. This review contributes to decision making by synthesizing the strengths and weaknesses of the innovations in textile waste management. Full article

In recent years, using non-trained individuals in sensory science for analytical tasks has gained traction. Identifying attributes enabling non-experts to express perceptions is crucial for accurate fabric assessments and effective communication of product properties to consumers. This study explored the potential utility of the Japanese onomatopoeia tsuru-tsuru as a sensory attribute for evaluating fabric surface properties. Two experiments were conducted. The first ranked 16 samples to identify those eliciting the tsuru-tsuru sensation, exploring its relationship with attributes like smoothness and coolness. The second involved a detailed descriptive sensory evaluation of selected samples, examining the relationship between tsuru-tsuru, coolness, slipperiness, and hardness. Fabric preferences assessment and cluster analysis were also employed to understand individual differences in perception. Sensory assessments revealed tsuru-tsuru’s comparable performance with attributes like smoothness and slipperiness, facilitating effective sample distinction. Participants showed high agreement, indicating shared perceptions. Preferences favored fabrics with tsuru-tsuru qualities. The clustering analysis revealed participants had slightly different interpretations of tsuru-tsuru. Overall, results indicated the positive potential value of tsuru-tsuru in describing textile surfaces for non-trained individuals. Full article

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is a composite material consisting of a concrete matrix with a high-performance reinforcement made of technical textiles. TRC offers unique mechanical properties for the construction industry, enabling the construction of lightweight, material-minimized structures with high load-bearing potential. In addition, compared with traditional concrete design, TRC offers unique possibilities to realize free-form, double-curved structures. After more than 20 years of research, TRC is increasingly entering the market, with several demonstrator elements and buildings completed and initial commercialization successfully finished. Nevertheless, research into this highly topical area is still ongoing. In this paper, the authors give an overview of the current and future trends in the research and application of textiles in concrete construction applications. These trends include topics such as maximizing the textile utilization rate by improving the mechanical load-bearing performance (e.g., by adapting bond behavior), increasing design freedom by utilizing novel manufacturing methods (e.g., based on robotics), adding further value to textile reinforcements by the integration of additional functions in smart textile solutions (e.g., in textile sensors), and research into increasing the sustainability of TRC (e.g., using recycled fibers). Full article

Thermophysiological comfort is a crucial aspect of human life, contributing to health and work performance. The current paper aims to enhance the understanding of current research, progress, and remaining challenges regarding clothing thermophysiological comfort from a textile science perspective. It provides a comprehensive review of several facets of clothing thermophysiological comfort, focusing on the history of thermophysiological comfort prediction models, heat and moisture transfer mechanisms in the skin–clothing–environment system, controlling factors of thermophysiological comfort, textile materials for superior thermophysiological comfort, and thermal comfort assessment techniques. The paper shows that previously developed thermophysiological comfort models were mainly based on the human thermoregulation process. However, the effect of the air gap size between the human skin and the cloth layer, i.e., the microclimate, on the heat and moisture transfer in the skin–clothing–environment system has been largely overlooked. In addition, thermophysiological comfort models of skin–clothing–environment systems generally only considered dry thermal resistance and evaporative resistance, yet many other fabric properties have effects on human thermophysiological comfort. Potential future directions are identified to fill some of the current gaps. A conceptual model of clothing comfort to contribute to a better understanding of thermophysiological comfort is also proposed. Full article