Infrared Thermography Helps Improve Comfort of Athletes

FLIR Advanced Thermal Solutions has announced a new application story that describes how leading sportswear
manufacturer - Adidas has used infrared thermography to help develop a new generation of sports shoes featuring
ventilated ClimaCool2™ technology.

The article describes how the Adidas test centre in Scheinfeld, Germany used the FLIR ThermaCAM SC 3000 thermal imaging camera throughout the development of the ClimaCool2™ technology. The concept behind ClimaCool™  technology is fairly simple. When athletes start to run they start to sweat. This not only gives them an uncomfortable feeling, but when the feet start to sweat and get hot and wet, there is the possibility to get blisters.

The Adidas researchers looked to identify which part of the foot is getting the hottest. Once this was determined Adidas started to develop the ClimaCool2™ running shoe with the goal to drain as much heat as possible from these areas.

After careful evaluation Adidas chose the ThermaCAM™ SC3000 as it offered high thermal sensitivity (0.02°C) and high  resolution (320 x 240 pixels) enabling them to see the smallest temperature differences and also measure the temperature at 76,800 individual measurement points.

Additionally producing images at a rate of 50 Hz with very short integration times allowed the researchers to see blur-free images and to measure the slightest of changes in realtime  when the athlete is running at full speed. This made it possible to see immediately how the shoe was reacting to the temperature differences in the foot over
a period of time. FLIR ThermaCAM™ Researcher™ software was used to  undertake extensive thermal analysis on the obtained results.

Tests comparing the new ClimaCool2™ running shoe, the original ClimaCool™ running shoe and a standard running shoe showed that ClimaCool2™ offers up to 32% more cooling to the foot than traditional running footwear and a 12% increase in cooling over the original Adidas ClimaCool™ shoe.