Analysis of physical properties and structure design of weft-knitted spacer fabric with high porosity

The main content dealt with in the paper is to present a kind of weft-knitted spacer fabric with high porosity. It is a kind of three-dimensional textile fabric with a sandwich structure that consists of a middle layer of multifilament and two outer layers of plain-knitted fabric. Compared with traditional warp-knitted spacer fabric as cushion mats, weft-knitted spacer fabric is well used as apparel for good softness, thermal/moisture comfort, and air permeability. Therefore, three structures were designed and nine samples were prepared by choosing plain-knitted fabric as the outer layers and selecting soft and thin multifilament as a middle layer. Experimental results show that this kind of weft-knitted spacer fabrics has high porosity, greater than 86%, and also demonstrate that the weft-knitted spacer fabric is suitable for comfortable apparel based on experimental results of air permeability, compression properties, stiffness, and thermal insulation properties.