Active fabrics providing better comfort of the garments and footwear rapidly become an essential part of our life. However, only limited information about the performance of such fabrics is commonly available for the garment and footwear designers, and tests are often done only with the final products. Thus development of the objective testing methods for the fabric assemblies containing microporous membranes and garments using them is one of the important topics. Garment tests in the climate chamber when exercising in windy and rainy conditions with a set of temperature and humidity sensors placed over the body allow comparing manufactured garments for thermal and humidity comfort. To allow for better material testing a new laboratory setup was developed for studying the dynamics of the humidity transport through different fabrics at realistic conditions in extension of the existing ISO test procedure. Present paper discusses the experimental procedures and first results acquired with new setup.

Sensor nodes containing pairs of temperature and humidity sensors were assessed as a mean of garmentperformance and comfort studies. Modern sensors are small, low weight and produce minimal disturbancewhen placed under the garments and in the footwear. Four sensor nodes were used to provide dynamicinformation about heat and humidity transfer properties of garments during the tests in realistic conditions.Pilot studies were carried out for the few models of cross country skiing garments and waders. Main studieswere carried out in the wind tunnel at Mid Sweden University having pivoted treadmill, temperature controland rain capacity. Additional experiments with the waders were carried out in a large water tank. Studies ofthe temperature and humidity dynamics under the garments containing microporous membranes illustratethe importance of recognizing main features of such materials. In particular, such membranes can onlytransport moisture from the side where humidity is higher. It means that garments and footwear containingsuch membranes will potentially behave differently when ambient air humidity changes. In particular,modern garments with incorporated microporous membranes being superior at low ambient air humidity canbe dramatically less effective for moisture transfer from the body in the rain.

AIM: The aim of this paper was to investigate the influence of the new cross country racing suit, designed for the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver 2010, on cardio-respiratory, thermoregulatory and perceptual responses.METHODS: Six elite cross country skiers (29±6 years, peak oxygen uptake 73.2±6.9 mL·min-1·kg-1) performed two exercise bouts wearing either the 2009 or the 2010 racing suit. Bouts consisted of incremental testing on roller skis (12 km·h-1 at 5° inclination; 11 km·h-1 at 6° inclination and 12 km·h-1at 8° inclination for six minutes).RESULTS: During increasing intensities, significantly lower values were found for oxygen uptake, minute ventilation, RER and heart rate when wearing the new suit compared to the old one (P<0.05; effect sizes: 0.21-4.00). Core temperature was lower with the new suit during steps 2 and 3 (P<0.05, effect size: 1.22-1.27). Also, mean skin temperature was lower during the last increment (P<0.05, effect size: 0.87).CONCLUSION:The new 2010 racing suit, developed specifically for the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver 2010, demonstrated lower values for oxygen uptake, minute ventilation, heart rate, skin and core temperature, ratings of thermal and sweat sensation when compared to the 2009 racing suit.