The article reviews the compression behavior of warp knit spacer fabrics intended for cushioning applications. An experimental study has been conducted on the compression behavior of a series of warp-knitted fabrics made for cushioning applications. The compression behavior of these fabrics and the effect of each structural parameter have been evaluated by the use of both the compression stress-strain curves and energy efficiency diagrams and the influence of each structural parameter analyzed. The findings show that warp knitted spacer fabrics are an ideal class of energy absorbers for cushioning applications, and their energy-absorption capacity can easily be tailored to meet specific end-use requirements by simply varying their structural parameters with the help of efficiency diagrams. The spherical compression behavior of warp knitted spacer fabrics has been studied by development of a theoretical model to predict the spherical ball compression properties of the spacer fabric. The analysis results reveal that the spherical compression effects decrease with increasing ball radius, and increase with increasing the fabric thickness. It is expected that this study could help us better understand the behavior of knitted spacer fabrics under spherical compression. The calculated values from the theoretical model have been compared with experimental measurements, and good agreements found between both. Based on the plane compression testing results, the validated model can be used to predict the spherical compression behaviors of knitted spacer fabrics compressed with different radii of the spherical balls.
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