Digital Development Strategy for Medical Therapeutic Textiles: Knitting Variables to Precise Morphology and Pressure Managements

Abstract

Therapeutic tubular compression textiles (TCTs) have been extensively applied in the prevention and treatment of chronic venous insufficiency of lower extremities. An efficiency and operable development strategy to achieve the morphologic control and pressure fitness of TCTs needs to be proposed to improve the medical precision and patient adherence. Therefore, the present study qualitatively explored the influencing mechanisms of each knitting variable on physical-mechanical properties and pressure behaviors of TCTs. Then constructed the quantitative models to digitalize the knitting variables for determination of yarn-machinery setting design values. The results revealed that the feeding velocity of elastic inlay yarn materials and loop size settings impacted the pressure values owing to the diversities of fabric dimensions and mechanical tensile properties, respectively. Simultaneously, the derivation ratios of proposed circumferential and pressure models evaluated by experimental validated trials were approximately 1.1% and 10.8%, respectively. This study achieved the digital development of compression textiles with required morphologies and pressure performances. And provided a novel approach for the parametric design of textile-based compression products for targeted users.

Keywords: Laid-in knitted fabric, digital development, parametric knitting design, pressure fitness.