Bulletin of
Vitebsk State
Technological
University

Abstract

Protective and working gloves are functional textile products built up by a composition of different fiber materials. Several products are further equipped with coatings or embedded membranes. Fibers used for gloves belong to the category of conventional fibers and to fibers with advanced properties. Advanced fiber materials like high-performance polyethylene HPPE, glass fibers or aramid are used to implement advanced properties like cut-resistance or heat protection. In fact, protective gloves are perfect examples for products containing advanced and high-performance properties. According to this statement, the actual paper gives an overview on selected protective gloves offered on the German market, reporting their material compositions and some functional properties. As cut-resistance fibers most often HPPE fibers or glass fibers are used. To improve wearing comfort often elastane fibers are added in amounts of few percentage. As conventional fibers mainly polyamide or polyester fibers are used. Most gloves are equipped with coatings from polyurethane or nitrile to increase the grip and as an additional protective element. Material properties are supported by measurements of air permeability, surface electrical resistance, electron microscopy and IR spectroscopic data. Microscopic and spectroscopic methods cannot detect similarly all fibers which are mentioned in supplier information. However, also fiber types which are not claimed by the suppliers are determined in some gloves. By this actual overview the reader gains a fine view on used materials and a tool for fiber analytics on commercially available protective textile products.

Protective and working gloves as functional textile products – overview on commercial products with special dedication to advanced fiber materials