An Investigation of Parameters on Heat Transfer of Spacer Fabric Using Image Processing Method

The knowledge of the thermal properties of Spacer fabrics is important with regard to their vast applications in most industries such as the automotive industry, mattresses, etc. Thermal properties, are as one of the physical features of a textile, are influenced by its structural parameters such as thickness, density, and so on. This paper aims at the measurement of thermal properties, heat distribution and the relation between thermal transmission and parameters of the spacer fabric. For this purpose, an image processing method was used to produce clustered images based on the k-means clustering algorithm to determine the sample temperature and heat distribution.The 3D thermal distribution of fabric and the results of image processing with the clustering technique showed that the heat transfer rate and heat distribution of fabrics depended on the thickness and density of the fabrics, so that dense samples have more uniform heat distribution. At the relationship between heat transfer and the fabric parameters, the results showed that thermal conductivity increases as the thickness and density of the spacer fabric increases. Image processing technique is proposed as an accurate method to determining the heat distribution in three-dimensional objects.