Performance characteristics of nylon and spandex when used as base layers

Again, I'm no expert or anything but

It seems like there are factors other than fabric thickness that affect water absorption. If you had two fabrics of same thickness, one with monofilament thread and the other with normal thread, and they got wet, the monofilament thread fabric would absorb less water because there wouldn't be any soaked up into the thread. Maybe this isn't that important and effect and most of the water is soaked up between the threads that make up the fabric.

An interesting thing about your table is that it says when the fibers are wetted the data isn't relevant. The hydrophobic and hydrophilic sites are covered by water so they no longer have those properties.

That makes me think maybe all this talk about wicking fabrics using the words hydrophobic and hydrophilic is mostly marketing. In the real world, the fabric gets slightly damp from sweat and then that property goes away.

Instead, you should have the fabric that feels good dry, and absorbs the least amount of water so that when it gets wet hiking it'll dry off quickly when you're done hiking at your campsite.

Supplex nylon is pretty good.

Maybe Capilene polyester is better, based on all the wicking clothing advertised, but then my marketing alarm is going off like crazy so I'm skeptical.

Now, let's argue about cotton…

I poked around a little more

BPL article compares Capilene and wool and concludes Capilene dries a little faster. But they don’t look at Supplex.

Mark’s article looked at Polyester (not Capilene), Polypropolene, and Supplex – determined Polyester and Polypropelene dried slightly quicker than Supplex, but wool and cotton were much worse.

Both of those did somewhat ad hoc testing rather than some industry standard test.

I’m still liking my Supplex shirt – feels good, way tougher than those flimsy knit fabrics – it makes a good shirt in nice weather, and is only a slightly worse base layer so I don’t need to carry two shirts.

Roger,

ASTM D1909 Document Information:
Title: Standard Table of Commercial Moisture Regains for Textile Fibers
ASTM International Publication Date: Mar 1, 2004
Scope: This table lists the commercial moisture regains commonly used for a number of textile fibers. Such moisture regain values are intended primarily for determining the commercial weight of a specific fiber when the fiber is bought or sold on this basis. These regain values also are used in calculating the linear density of yarn in procedures employing such factors and in the quantitative analysis of fiber blends.

It looks like the D1909 regain test results were measured in the 2004 time frame.

The measurement of the moisture absorption of fibrous materials has been conducted by several techniques described as, gravimetric method (oven drying method), indirect methods (using electrical properties – capacitance method), and several other approaches. If we reference ASTM D-2654, moisture (content/pickup regain) in textile fibers (natural/man-made/ filament/finished fabrics) that test result matched the test that you did.

It looks like the testing method used accounts for the difference. The D1909 regain values are measured at an ambient environment of ~70F and 65% RH in contrast to the D2654 test.

Jerry,

I am going to pass on your request to "argue about cotton".

…

the steep regain as humidity increases for natural fibers is most interesting …