By Ken Mammarella
Contributing Writer

The temperature inside the W.L. Gore & Associates Elk Mills facility was 95, with the relative humidity 40% and a light wind blowing at 3 miles an hour.

Just right for the next test using Gore’s world-renowned environmental chamber.

And if Ray Davis, a comfort research and development associate who runs the testing operation, wanted other conditions – temperatures from minus 58 to 122 degrees, relative humidity from 5 to 98% and wind from 0.4 to 20 miles per hour – the chamber could get there in two hours.

Identify a place by longitude and latitude and pick the time, and the chamber’s system could adjust the lighting to replicate that solar loading, sunrise to sunset, from 0 to a searing 1,100 watts per square meter. “Imagine you’re in the parking lot of the Elkton Walmart on a cloud-free August day,” the Elkton resident offered in comparison. “That’s 800 watts.”

During a tour of the facility, he referred to system settings and experiences in Alaska and Scotland. But there is no setting in the chamber for Elkton, five miles to the south. It’s too variable, he said.

A lot of interest

In 2016, Gore opened two labs at Elk Mills, a site that already had production lines for customized fabrics and laminates (about 90% of the output) and finished products (about 10%) and other labs. There are now about a dozen labs.

Gore emphasizes a testing pyramid, based first on the material (or component), then the laminate (or composite), then the system (such as a piece of attire) and finally the human user.

The newish heat protection and flame lab measures “three key elements of burn protection: flame resistance, thermal insulation and thermal stability,” the company said at the time.

The newish biophysics lab is highlighted by the environmental chamber and the rain tower, a 32-foot-tall, 100-square-foot room that can vary the intensity of the rain, the temperature of the rain and air and the intensity of the wind. 

These cutting-edge labs have since been showcased in about 150 tours a year, Davis said, and they have generated coverage in consumer magazines like Popular Mechanics, Rider, Golf Monthly and Runner’s World and industry publications like National Defense Magazine and Knitting Trade Journal. Gore itself has posted video tours of testing on YouTube and 360-degree virtual panoramas on www.gore-tex.com/technology/virtual-lab-tour. 

The environmental chamber is a futuristic-looking 20- by 30-foot box with sleek steel walls, floors and a domed ceiling. It can be set up with two treadmills to assess the movement of both robotic mannequins (the robust Wally, the more sophisticated Walter) and humans (Gore associates, local first responders, students) wearing clothing that’s being tested.

It has a lot of climatic controls to allow for repeatable tests. “Physics is a finicky beast,” Davis said. “We need to eliminate as many variables as possible.”

Rain, rain, go help science

The rain tower – one of three in Elk Mills and one of seven at Gore facilities worldwide – is so tall to make sure the raindrops reach terminal velocity. It can rain up to 3 inches an hour, a figure that Elkton has marked only once in the last 150 years, Davis said.

A smaller rain room is down the hall, with hydraulics moving two mannequins wearing jackets in lifelike motion so that the testing can cover not just the fabric, but also the stitching, zippers and other elements of the garment construction to satisfy Gore’s “guarantee to keep you dry” promise.

Among other things, Gore associates measure how much water gets into the undergarments worn by the human and android subjects.

Even shoelaces are considered in Gore’s style approval of items made by other firms, said Amy Calhoun, a public affairs communicator, to ensure that they are not wicking water into socks and, ultimately, feet.

One combo of intense rain and high winds is designed to mimic “a motorcyclist on I-95, passing tractor trailers,” he said.

The rain tower is several generations advanced from the enterprise’s early history. “The original was Bob Gore’s shower in his Newark home,” said Davis, after earlier casually commenting on how comfortable he felt in “head to toe Gore-Tex” attire during a recent visit to Niagara Falls.

Test and then test again

Testing throughout the site covers a long laundry list of the qualities of fabrics and laminates. In fact, laundry is a factor in at least two tests, one assessing the impact of washing with detergent, the other the wear and tear over many hours of agitation in washing machines. 

Other tests consider “finding that balance between durability and comfort,” he said. Case in point: The multiple layers in firefighting gear that protects the user against heat, flame, smoke and water while allowing the user to move easily and quickly. One miracle product is Pyrad fabric, which can self-extinguish flames, forming a stable char that minimizes heat transfer and hence burns. It’s also waterproof and made in high-visibility yellow.

Some tests involve how noisy a fabric is when the user moves. Hunters want quiet fabrics to avoid alerting their prey, Davis said, also referring to the concept as the “Costanza effect,” named for the swooshing pants that the character wore in a 1994 episode of “Seinfeld.”

Some involve exposing fabric to contaminants like jet fuel, motor oil, sunscreen and insect repellant, weighting them down and determining what penetrates into the fabric and what effect that has.

Another key test involves the moisture vapor transfer rate, measured by the modified desiccant method, a test that Gore developed and is now an industry standard, he said.

“A water bath that’s the same temperature as a human body [is] covered by the fabric to be tested,” a blogger wrote for REI, the outdoor gear company. “Potassium acetate or sodium chloride, both which absorb water, are used to draw moisture up through the material – then it’s a matter of comparing the pre- and post-test weights to see how much water was picked up. The more water picked up, the more breathable the material.”

Stretchability, pilling and clinginess are also assessed. 

Then there’s “how it feels,” that subjective assessment that can only come from people, both in bench testing at Elk Mills and out in the field, somewhere else in the world.

The Elk Mills site has the equipment for about 3,000 different tests, all part “of our continuous effort to understand materials,” Davis said “We’re always looking to improve” the testing and, more importantly, the resulting material. 

“My house would a great location” for testing by his four energetic sons, he joked.