Lab

Laboratory for Biomimetic Membranes and Textiles


About the lab

Featured research (2)

The infrared radiative heat from the human body accounts for more than 60% of dry heat loss. Textiles with mid-infrared (MIR) transparency can help achieve good radiative personal cooling and potentially save energy on building refrigeration. The interaction between MIR light and textiles is complex, involving fibre materials and yarn structure parameters and a precise computation of the optical characteristics of the textile is required. This paper presents a modelling methodology to predict the MIR transfer behaviour from human skin through a textile by simulating the radiative properties of textiles on the micro-scale. The model was validated qualitatively and quantitatively for transmittance, reflection, and absorption using FTIR data and parametric studies were carried out by varying the yarn diameter and filling factor. The results reveal that: (1) Increasing the yarn diameter results in decreased total transmittance and reflection and increased absorption for both PE and PET fabrics; (2) Increasing the yarn filling factor results in decreased total transmittance and reflection and increased absorption for both PE and PET fabrics; (3) The effect of changing the structural parameters was more dominant for commercial PET fabrics than for radiative cooling PE fabrics.

Lab head

René Michel Rossi
Department
  • Department Materials meet Life

Members (35)

Thijs Defraeye
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Giuseppino Fortunato
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Simon Annaheim
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Agnes Psikuta
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Daniel Onwude
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Luciano F. Boesel
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Amin Sadeghpour
  • University of Leeds
Kongchang Wei
  • Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Alexander Haag
Alexander Haag
  • Not confirmed yet

Alumni (10)

Daniel Crespy
  • Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology
Lukas Scherer
  • GlucoSet AS