Abstract
Clothing pressure is closely connected with the degree of comfort of an athlete's tight-fitting garments. Therefore, the construction of sports garments is very important to the wearer's athletic performance. In this study, the fundamental relationship between the reduction rates of stretch fabrics and clothing pressure was explored with the aim of improving clothing comfort and obtaining a systematic pattern reduction for women's tight-fitting bodysuits. A women's bodysuit pattern was obtained by the draping method using a dressform. The basic pattern was divided into four parts and changed into reduced pattems according to the amount of fabric stretch determined by ASTM D2594. Clothing pressure was measured using an air-pack-type pressure sensor (model AMI 3037-2) at 20 locations (shoulder, 9 locations; bust, 5; and armhole, 6). Among the 15 garments tested, the mean pressure of the A1 bodysuit was 4.60 $gf/cm^2$, and that of the C5 bodysuit was 22.98 $gf/cm^2$. The mean pressures of the bodysuits with reduction rates of 10% and 20% were below 10 $gf/cm^2$, while those of suits with reduction rates of 30%,40%, and 50% (except C5) were below 20 $gf/cm^2$. The pressure at the shoulder was 9.50$\sim$32.24 $gf/cm^2$, which was higher than that at the bust (3.34$\sim$24.56 $gf/cm^2$) and the armhole (0.95$\sim$12.15 $gf/cm^2$). The mean pressures of the 15 bodysuits were divided into five groups using analysis of variance (ANOVA), and were found to be significantly different (p<0.001). Regression analysis afforded the following expression: mean pressure ($gf/cm^2$) = 1.607 + 0.369[reduction rate (%)].
