Thermal properties of neoprene and natural rubber in wetsuits

Abstract

Surfers have concurred some of the harshest regions of the world with their surfboard, like the arctic waves of Norway. This is only made possible due to the wetsuit, a critical piece of equipment that enables surfers to stay in frigid waters and temperatures for hours. To understand the thermal behavior of wetsuits, knowledge on the phenomenon of heat transfer, and especially the conductive and convective heat transfer modes are important. By capturing the thermal signature of frozen samples of neoprene and natural rubber in dry and wet phase with FLIR T1030sc infrared camera, and comparing the results with simulations, the conductivity and the overall heat transfer coefficient of the materials was estimated. The simulations were carried out in MATLAB® and Ansys and the solution is based on the Heat equation. The approximated solution to the Heat equation is discretized using the finite difference method and solved using the FTCS (Forward-Time-Central-Space) method in MATLAB® software. The results reveal acceptable agreement between the experimental data and the simulations, except for the wet samples. It was found that the presence of water inside the material, compromises the thermal properties of the wetsuit.