Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Insulation — where it appears

A fabric's resistance to the flow of heat through it, which is almost entirely the resistance of the still air it holds. It rises with the thickness and falls as the share of the volume that is fibre rises, since fibre conducts several times better than air.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

What two layers of one yarn buy. For each cloth in the table here, the thickness and the thermal resistance of a two-layer cloth carrying exactly the same yarn per unit area, as ratios to the single cloth. The thickness ratio is √2 everywhere, to three figures. The warmth ratio runs from 1.588 on the openest cloth to 1.717 on the closest, because dividing the yarn also divides the fibre fraction and the mixture conducts less.

Two layers are warmer than they are thick

Six essays have taken a double cloth apart from the draft's side. None has asked what the reader gets. Divide one cloth's yarn into two layers and the fabric is 41 per cent thicker — √2, which is the account's own law — and about 70 per cent warmer, because dividing the yarn also divides the fibre fraction and the mixture conducts less. The gap widens with every further layer and never closes, and a shaft loom stops at two.

fancy · Double cloth What stitching takes back from a double muslin. The warmth a two-layer muslin of the same yarn gains beyond its √2 thickness, against the share of a layer's intersections that carry a stitch, with a 5-end satin face. Under the parallel rule the bonus is 18.8 per cent whatever the stitching, because that rule already treats every fibre as running through the cloth. Under Maxwell's rule for fibres lying across the heat's path the bare bonus is 8.4 per cent and each stitch takes some back: one stitch a repeat (4% of intersections) leaves 7.6, one a pick, scattered (20% of intersections) leaves 4.7, every hidden position (60% of intersections) leaves -1.5.

A stitch takes back what the parallel rule cannot see

Dividing a cloth's yarn into two layers makes it warmer than its thickness, and the essay that found it computed the warmth by the one mixing rule that cannot see a stitch — the one that treats every fibre as though it ran straight through the cloth. That rule gives the largest bonus there is. Yarn in a cloth lies in its plane, and by the rule for fibres lying across the heat's path a double muslin's bonus is 8.4 per cent, not 18.8. A stitch is the one fibre that does run through the cloth, and at half the intersections it takes the whole bonus back.

fancy · Double cloth

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Cloth thicknessDouble clothPacking factorSettSpecificationStitchingStitching planYarn count

All concepts