Fibers for Sports Textiles

Sports textiles mainly consist of both sportswear and sports equipment, because different natural and synthetic textile-fiber-based products are used in both categories. Sportswear has a vast range of wearing items which can be classified as sports-inspired wear, outdoor wear, performance wear, and leisure wear. Different functional fibers are used in sportswear to get desired results having different properties like comfort, thermal conductivity, cold and heat indices, and stretch and recovery. Similarly, there is a vast range of sports that include hiking, snow sports, cycling, mountaineering, hockey, baseball, squash, and sailing, using a range of sportswear for both fashion and functionality. The outfits and equipments used in these sports are also composed of different functional and high-performance fibers like polyester, acrylic, nylon, spandex, polyolefin, aramid, and carbon. For various attires’ manufacturing, synthetic fibers and their blends with different natural fibers, i.e., cotton, hemp, bamboo, silk and wool, are also used. The advanced countries are using their strengths in the field of materials and engineering technologies to develop new functional fibers. Now a days, composite fibers and fiber reinforced composite material based light weight products are used in sports goods with improved strength and functionalities.