Determination of natural convective heat transfer coefficient for plain knitted fabric via CFD modeling

In this study, the natural convective heat transfer coefficient for plain knitted fabric is estimated by numerical modeling, and the applicability of commercial software using the finite volume method (FVM) to textile problems was investigated. For this purpose, the convective heat transfer coefficient of plain knitted fabric made from cotton was first measured experimentally with the help of the in-house set-up developed. Then a plain weft knitted fabric model was created using CATIA, and Gambit and Fluent software was employed for numerical analyses. Finally experimental results were compared with those obtained from the numerical method. Based on the results, it was concluded that the numerical modeling simulated the related experimental study well. It was also stated that the numerical model developed has the potential to obtain the heat convection coefficient of the material considered for different conditions such as environment temperature etc.