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Body mapping of sweating patterns in athletes: A sex comparison

Sponsored by the adidas Innovation Team (Germany), this research was undertaken to provide clothing designers with the physiological and perceptual knowledge for the design of athletic sports clothing. Using modern production techniques, designers can now use a multitude of fabrics in the same garment, adapting the local properties to the wearer’s physiology. The body sweat maps produced in this paper build on the long term research line of body mapping in the Environmental Ergonomics Research Centre where body temperature, sensitivity and sweat maps have been produced and published for a range different target users.

This paper, published in a peer reviewed Sports Science Journal (ranked 3rd of 85 in Sports Science; ISI Web of Knowledge) after the end of the confidentiality period, reports on a specific aspect of the research; female-specific sweat patterns (comparing these to male’s published earlier in European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2011), allowing designers to develop gender-specific clothing designs with fabric moisture properties matching regions of female sweat production. The knowledge is now being used by Adidas in the design of improved sportswear products. Publication will also enable this knowledge to be used in the design of a wide variety of female-specific garments and wearable products.