Exploring Smart Cooling Garments for Endurance Cycling Athletes

Abstract

Cooling comfort is an essential requirement to maintain the health and well-being of endurance athletes. The high-temperature climate conditions exist in tropical countries intensify this requirement. Therefore, we conducted this study to derive smart cooling garment concepts, to fulfil the cooling requirements of endurance cycling athletes living in Sri Lanka, which is a tropical country. Four focus group sessions and four brainstorming workshops were conducted with endurance cycling athletes living in Sri Lanka. The study participants identified user-controllable cooling, zonal cooling, sweat evaporation and cost-effectiveness as essential considerations. Based on the results, we explored three prototypes for the smart cooling garment. These are Peltier cooling concept with manual control, fan cooling concept with manual control and automatic cooling concept. We describe the construction of the three prototypes along with the plan for future evaluations.