Development of shirt pattern for wheelchair tennis players through 3D avatars

This study is to develop the wheelchair tennis pattern to improve comfort by reducing garment strain in a CAD program by analyzing seven body movements related to garment strain during play. The bodice was subdivided into surface zones in the present study to efficiently develop 2D patterns that can later be transferred into 3D virtual garments and draped onto 3D avatars. The 2D patterns were developed based on morphological analysis that provided different possible solutions to enhance comfort by releasing garment strain at each surface zone. The structural lines and wearing ease grade points were utilized to adjust a tennis shirt block pattern when developing this 2D pattern at morphological analysis step. In this study, 3D body scanner was used to create 3D avatars with postures based on the determined seven body movements. The drafted pattern was used to drape the virtual garments on the each movement of 3D avatars in the CAD program, and then the stain areas of the pattern design were identified using the tension map. In all of the movements, the majority of garment strain appeared on the shoulder surface and around the neck within the surface zone of bodice shoulder angle. The majority of other strain found was on the shoulder blade as the bodice bust zone during movements in the forehand swing, backhand swing, serve toss, and serve follow through postures. Based on these strain results obtained from 3D scanner, the first pattern was developed to release strains in shoulder as seen by the significant decrease in strain during both forehand movements. The second pattern was constructed to release other maximized strain on the back surface zone of the shoulder blade. Based on the results of this study, it should be noted that the shoulder and the shoulder blade areas are important during development of patterns in terms of decreasing strain for comfort during wheelchair tennis play movements.