Measuring the thermal insulation and evaporative resistance of sleeping bags using a supine sweating fabric manikin

For testing the thermal insulation of sleeping bags, standard test methods and procedures using heated manikins are provided in ASTM F1720-06 and EN 13537:2002. However, with regard to the evaporative resistance of sleeping bags, no instrument or test method has so far been established to give a direct measurement. In this paper, we report on a novel supine sweating fabric manikin system for directly measuring the evaporative resistance of sleeping bags. Eleven sleeping bags were tested using the manikin under the isothermal condition, namely, both the mean skin temperature of the manikin and that of the environment were controlled to be the same at 35 °C, with the wind speed and ambient relative humidity at 0.3 m s-1 and 50%, respectively. The results showed that the novel supine sweating fabric manikin is reproducible and accurate in directly measuring the evaporative resistance of sleeping bags, and the measured evaporative resistance can be combined with thermal insulation to calculate the moisture permeability index of sleeping bags. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.