**3.3. Ideal padding**

**Figure 2.** Important physical and physiological factors affecting padding comfort

ment.

168 Non-woven Fabrics

**3.2. Material and structure**

Other comfort for padding includes the sensorial or tactile comfort which is related to the mechanical contact of the fabric with skin, that is, how a fabric or garment feels when it is worn next to the skin [31]. These are fabric handle or feel, softness, fullness, warm–cool touch, static charge generation, flexing, pricking, itching, etc. The physiological comfort, such as fitting, which is related to aesthetic properties of the fabric, that is, drape, lustre, colour, crease, pilling, staining, etc., are not our concern for the padding application. Figure 2 lists the important physical and physiological factors affecting padding comfort. Among all comfort characteris‐ tics, the most important factor is the movement of heat and moisture (liquid and vapour) through padding to maintain the thermal equilibrium between human body and the environ‐

Nonwoven used for padding is developed either via needle-punching or thermal-bonding process. Needle-punched technology is where the entanglement of fibres is achieved via mechanical punching using needle beds. In thermal-bonding process, heat is used for the bonding of fibrous web. The fibres used for nonwoven padding is either single-component fibres (polyester, polypropylene, viscose, or cotton) or blend of fibres (polyester/viscose, polyolefin/viscose or polyester/cotton) in the structure [29]. In addition to nonwoven structure, the foam materials are also used as padding. The material used for foam padding is polyur‐ ethane and the common structure is open cell foam. Polyurethane foam materials have the advantage of not adhering to the wound or surrounding skin, which makes them attractive when treating fragile skin often found in the elderly [34]. Also these polyurethane materials absorb wound drainage four times more than hydrocolloid dressings of similar sizes. Foam Several requirements must be met before considering a nonwoven as an ideal padding bandage. Some of critical needs are [6]:

