One of the most important purposes of wet suit is to keep the divers warm under water, so its heat insulating capacity at the depth, where divers can arrive, must be studied. The heat insulating capacities of ten kinds of wet suit materials, of commercial foam rubber sheet were measured under high pressures.
And the following results were obtained:
(1) The authors developed a new measuring apparatus to determine the thermal conductivity of foam rubber specimens under high pressures.
(2) At the depth of 10m (at the corresponding pressures), most of the commercial wet suit materials decreased their heat insulating capacities down to 1/2 and their thicknesses from 3/5 to 2/5 of the initial ones.
(3) A relationship between the heat insulating capacity and the thickness of most of the foam rubber specimens under high pressure was almost linear. The heat insulating capacity increased with the increase of the thickness of the specimens.
(4) Under the same thickness, the heat insulating capacity increased with the decrease of the radius of isolated foam cells in the materials and of the specific gravity of materials.