2023-2024 Senior Design Projects

Sponsor

Hanesbrands

Team Members

Alex Crandall, Will Dobrowski, Jacob Haddock, Jonah Nus

Project Description

In the 1930’s Hanesbrands invented the hoodie because of athlete insights. Hanesbrands designed and developed the hooded sweatshirt for use as a warm-up or “sideline” garment for athletes to wear in-between game time or practice sessions. Since then we’ve patented and created several new fleece fabrications such as the Reverse Weave, Classic Fleece, Powerblend, Soft Touch and Campus French Terry. We’ve seen other brands create “fleece” through new methods of make such as nonwovens to reinvent this traditional fabrication.

Sponsor

Hanesbrands

Team Members

Rachel Falkowski, Ysa Ferreria, Colin Kirila, Yuchen Zhou

Project Description

Sustainability within the textile and apparel industry is no longer a “nice to have”, it is non-negotiable. At Hanesbrands, we are creating a more comfortable world for every body by focusing on People, Planet, and Product. Within Product we look at materials, packaging and are committed to taking a circularity-based approach to our supply chain going forward. Brands like Allbirds have done an incredible job creating net zero based products to provide transparency of their supply chain to the consumer.

Sponsor

Hanesbrands

Team Members

KJ Crenshaw, Kinkead Crotts, Kylie Scott, Tytianah Ward

Project Description

Comfort is one of the key pillars of our family of brands. We create millions of pairs of socks annually and deliver them globally to our consumers. We are always looking for ways to improve the level of comfort for our consumers to help them get to and from work, run errands, and take part in their choice of physical activities.

Sponsor

Hanesbrands

Team Members

Karina Bhatia, Julia Heilmann, Madison Murry, Henry Phillips

Project Description

Circularity and recyclability are two areas of focus for our organization, both from a sustainability standpoint and at a brand level. One path that multiple brands within the industry have explored is the usage of nanomaterials to create a product thereby making it easier to break it  down to be reused again.

Sponsor

P&G

Team Members

Rosie Fisher, Zimeng Li, Maddy Moore, Elizabeth Siu

Project Description

There is a growing market trend for underwear with gussets uniquely designed to meet consumer needs of living life without needing to wear period (menstrual) pads / tampons. Many of these underwear brands have designed their gussets to double as adult incontinence solutions that are too heavy for liners but not heavy enough for adult diapers. Emotionally, this is a huge gap to fill to allow consumers to not feel broken and live their life the way they want without worry.

We are interested in a new design for core materials for absorbent underwear that overcomes traditional trade-offs seen in current market products, such as:

• The ability to hold a large amount of fluid, but is very thin and flexible
• The ability to hold onto fluid under pressure, but the fluid is easily rinsed out under running water or during a wash cycle.

Sponsor

AFFOA

Team Members

Carlos Alonzo-Montufar, Leo Delgado, Paige Greener, Peighton Jones

Project Description

AFFOA is developing best practices for the unique testing methods needed to qualify advanced functional fabric materials. In this project, the design team will collaborate with a technical team from AFFOA to develop new methods for electronic textile (e-textile) testing.  The team will develop a standardized abrasion test method of textile-based data and power conductors that provides insights on their durability, including the development of a standard operating procedure and the necessary statistical data analysis to ensure the reliability and reproducibility of the test method.

Sponsor

A&E

Team Members

Logan Boyle, Jenna Diemel, Brigitte Gallagher, Colleen Sheridan

Project Description

Through a patented process of natural fiber welding, determine the impact of this process on 100% cotton yarn properties. The team will assess common benchmarks including: single end strength, elongation, dye absorption, abrasion resistance, wicking, and fiber coating adhesion.

Sponsor

Under Armour

Team Members

Victor Alvarez-Valverde, Megan Dingle, Seongjin Kim, Sam Pan

Project Description

Visibility is a major concern for anyone outside in the dark. Many individuals turn to reflective vests or other gear to make sure they are seen. Reflective yarns used in apparel today have a scratchy hand feel due to the glass beads coated on the yarn surface. This team will be challenged to make a filament yarn that does not have a scratchy surface, but still has reflective properties and stretch.

Sponsor

Under Armour

Team Members

Leanna Hines, Drew Lingerfelt, Brandon Russ, Kairas Williams

Project Description

Compostable, or biodegradable, yarns and textiles are gaining traction in industry; however the high content of synthetic dyes in these textiles leaves questions about their true environmental impact. Natural dyes are interesting, but are difficult to use in manufacturing due to inconsistent color depositing and scale-up to meet large quantity orders. This team will look at natural dyes on both natural and synthetic fibers and evaluate their manufacturing feasibility and environmental impact.

Sponsor

Sail to Shelter, Ocean Voyages Institute

Team Members

Kaleah Gaddy, Ashwaath Sathyanarayanan, Charlotte Willis

Project Description

Modern sails are made from highly complex polymers and aramid fibers. The largest and most elite sails are layers of laminated taffetas, aramids and polymers all glued and smashed together. The quality and size vary greatly and the condition of the end of life sails varies greatly depending on how and where it was used, sailed and stored. 

Neither the manufacturers of the material nor the sailmakers have a scalable second life plan. This project will not only focus on sail recycling, but will also include ghostnets as collected from our oceans by Voyages Institute.

By including both sails and ghostnets, we aim to give you more plastic material to work with and build on previous work. We hope you will help find us a meaningful transformation for this incredible material that turns out to be nothing more than very expensive trash.