Journal of Science Technology and Food 22 (3) (2022) 321-329

MEASURE THE ULTRAVIOLET PROTECTION FACTOR (UPF)

OF FABRICS ON UV-VIS SPECTROPHOTOMETER

Nguyen Mai Thanh Thao*, Huynh Van Tri, Tran Nguyen Gia Han
Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry
*Email: thaonmt@hufi.edu.vn
Received: 25 June 2022; Accepted: 10 August 2022

ABSTRACT

Ultraviolet Protection Factor has been interested in the textile industry in the field of
protective clothing, but measuring devices are quite rare and expensive compared to their
effectiveness, so they are not easily found in textile material laboratories in our country. The
UV-VIS spectrophotometer is equipped in biochemical or food laboratories and is commonly
used to determine the concentration of solutions or chemical groups present in the solution,
and the machine is not used to measure solid materials. This study introduces a method to
measure the penetration (transmission) of fabrics in the ultraviolet radiation region and builds
software to automatically calculate the UPF from the results received on the UV-VIS
spectrophotometer at the Center of Experiment and Practice of our HUFI University.
Keywords: UPF, UVI, UV-VIS spectrophotometer.

1. INTRODUCTION

The past few decades have witnessed an alarming increase in the incidence of skin cancer
worldwide. The main reason is the depletion of ozone in the stratosphere of the atmosphere,
which reduces the efficiency of ultraviolet (UV) absorption of solar radiation [1].
As is known from studies [2, 3, 4, 5], although sunlight is essential for all life forms on
earth, it can also be harmful to humans through overexposure to some of its radiation
components of the sun, such as ultraviolet radiation. Long-term exposure to solar UV radiation
can cause acute and chronic health effects on the skin, eyes, and immune system. Depletion of
stratospheric ozone increases the intensity of UVB radiation received at ground level, and
sunburn or erythema is the most common acute consequence commonly detected when people
are active outdoors. In response to growing concerns, in 1994 [6] the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) released a standard index
for levels of UV rays in the environment (UVI), garment products' UV protection (UPF) and
recommends that everyone use protective clothing that provides adequate coverage and UV
resistance for outdoor activities to protect skin from this radiation.
UVI or ultraviolet irradiance index is a quantity representing UV radiation originating
from the sun with a weighting of the reddening effect on human skin as a single number. This
amount of radiation is measured at a specific location. They come from many different
directions of the sky, so it depends on many variables such as coordinates, geographic altitude
of the measuring point, date and time, angle and altitude of the zenith, the absorption of the
ozone layer, the scattering of clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere, the reflection of the water
surface or surrounding objects, [7] ... Quantitatively, the UV index is determined from the
following formula:

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400 nm
I UV = k er .
250 nm
 E( ).S( ).d (1)

Where
E(λ) - relative erythemal spectral effectiveness is calculated according to the standard
ISO 17166:1999/CIE S007/E-1998;
S(λ) - solar spectral irradiance at wavelength λ in W/(m2.nm);
ker - factor equal to 40 m2/W.
To make easily understood information about UV radiation and its harmful effects, the
IUV value is rounded up and called the UV index. With the above calculation, UVI has 12
values from 0 to 11+, which are conventionalized by the colors from green to red-violet
representing the level of danger to health as described in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Color convention of UVI according to international codes

(Source: World Health Organization, 2002, [7])

The UVI at ground level can be measured with spectrophotometers, but they are relatively
expensive and can be complicated to operate and maintain, so they are often located at national
meteorological stations. Some countries now forecast and publish UVI values on the internet.
It is very necessary to provide useful recommendations for preventing UV radiation and
ozone depletion. The public in many countries is becoming more and more aware of the
negative effects of ultraviolet radiation, so they are always looking for ways to protect their
health. In professional magazines, daily newspapers, and cyberspace... we can find many
different sections where dermatologists, meteorologists, biologists, and other experts warn us
about the sun’s rays.
The problem of UV radiation is interdisciplinary, so it is also the subject of textile
scientists. Outdoor activity can significantly affect UV exposure and the use of personal
protective equipment such as clothing, hats, parasols, tinted glasses or sunscreen, etc., as a
barrier between the source radiation to human skin to minimize that dose of exposure.
UPF is the UV protection factor of a person's outer protective layer that prevents
ultraviolet radiation from penetrating. UPF is determined by measuring the transmission
spectrum of ultraviolet radiation perpendicular to the surface of this protective layer and
evaluating it according to the following formula [2, 4, 5, 8]:
400

ED  E( ).S( ).

UPF = = 400
 = 290
(2)
 E( ).T( ).S( ).
ED m
 = 290

Where
- E(λ) is the relative erythemal spectral effectiveness is calculated according to the
standard ISO 17166:1999/CIE S007/E-1998;

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Measure the ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of fabrics on UV-VIS spectrophotometer

- S(λ) is the solar UVR spectral irradiance in Wm-2nm-1 according to the CIE [9, 10];
- T(λ) is the spectral transmittance at wavelength λ;
- Δλ is the wavelength (in nm).
UPF in formula (2) is the ratio between ED and EDm values with
- ED is the average effective UV radiation irradiance transmitted and calculated through the air;
- EDm is the average effective UV radiation irradiance transmitted and calculated through
the fabric.
Clothing is the most natural and common way to protect the human body from external
environmental factors, so the UPF is often used for fabrics or apparel. In the above definition,
the UPF indicates how much longer a person can stay in the sun when fabric covers the skin
compared to the time in the sun without fabric covering to obtain the same erythemal response.
The higher the UPF of the fabric, the better the skin protection. The UPF value is, therefore a
number representing the UV protection factor, indicating how well the item protects the user
from sunburn.

Table 1. UPF classification system according to AS/NZS and ASTM standards

(Source: AS/NZS 4399:1996 [10])

UPF Range UVR protection category Effective UVR transmission (%) UPF Ratings
15 to 24 Good protection 6.7 to 4.2 15, 20
25 to 39 Very Good protection 4.1 to 2.6 25, 30, 35
40 to 50, 50+ Excellent protection ≤2.5 40, 45, 50, 50+

Like the UVI, measuring the UPF requires an instrument with the same working principle
as a spectrometer; measuring the UPF means measuring the function T(λ) in the wavelengths
of UV rays present in the surface medium. Due to recent research, discovery, and development
of standards in this field, UPF testing equipment is not popular, expensive, but relatively
complicated to operate and maintain. Spectrophotometers in laboratories of biochemistry,
food, and medicine are only designed to measure solutions, if they are used to measure the
UPF of fabrics, it is necessary to have appropriate methods and calculations.
While the UVI of a certain region is updated hourly on the weather forecast information,
the UPF is almost nowhere to be checked and confirmed in our country today. Textile
manufacturing and finishing technologists do not have quantitative data on the UV protection
of their fabrics. The designers of protective clothing fail to determine the safety of the clothing
when worn outdoors in extreme weather. It is difficult for fashion retailers and consumers to
access the actual UPF of each garment and know the risk of skin cancer when it is used under
the sun.
Therefore, this study proposes a method to measure the UPF of fabric on the available
UV-VIS spectrophotometer of the Center of Experiment and Practice, based on that, building
software to calculate and report appropriate results with current international testing standards.

2. MEASUREMENT METHODS AND BUILDING EXCEL REPORT RESULTS

2.1. Measurement method

The photo Lab 7600 UV-VIS spectrophotometer from WTW (Germany) in the laboratory
[12] is a typical, relatively compact, single-beam spectrophotometer that measures absorption

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Nguyen Mai Thanh Thao, Huynh Van Tri, Tran Nguyen Gia Han

or transmission through fabrics from wavelength (200 - 400 nm) UV rays with a bandwidth of
4 nm. The working principle diagram and machine structure are shown in Figures 2 and 3.
The radiation source is a xenon flashlamp reflected by a concave mirror creating a parallel
beam that passes through the filter to the grating diffraction detector - stepper motor, so when
working, each monochromatic radiation band will shine through a quartz cuvette containing
the sample solution.
The cuvette size used during the experiment is 45 x 10 (mm x mm). Since the test object
is fabric and does not use any chemicals in the experiment, the prepared specimen will be 9 x
48 (mm x mm) flat ironed, folded at the top 5 mm to be held against the top edge of the cuvette
when hanging freely. This keeps the fabric flat during the measurement. The fabric face is then
parallel to one of the inside faces of the cuvette, perpendicular to the incident radiation. These
samples were measured under standard conditions of the laboratory at the Center of
Experiment and Practice (25oC, 65% Rh)

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the spectrophotometer.

Figure 3. WTW 7600 photo Lab UV-VIS spectrophotometer.

After the UV light passes through the fabric specimen located in the cuvette, the
penetrating component enters the photodiode sensor; the radiation intensity is converted into
potential and recognized by the microprocessor chip located in the electronic circuit. Here the
microprocessor compares this obtained value with the initial calibration potential value when
the light ray passes through the cuvette in the unpatterned state; % of radiation penetration is
calculated and the result is stored in the form of transmission spectrum T(λ).
After measuring each sample, the T(λ) function of the measurement results can be printed
out or saved to USB as a *.csv file as shown in Table 2.

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Measure the ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of fabrics on UV-VIS spectrophotometer

Table 2. Report on the spectral measurement results

Photo Lab 7600 UV-VIS 22021773 2.89-WTW-2.50

1650057619
0
4/15/2022 14:20:19 Transmission Smoothing
Blue
#Data (visible)
290 1.603
291 1.607
292 1.610
293 1.613
294 1.610
295 1.614
296 1.616
297 1.618

2.2. Processing measurement results

The UPF of the fabric is determined when there is a transmission function T(λ) in the
UVA - UVB range with the calculation completely according to the formula (2) described
above. Currently, many standards have been developed and published for specifying UPF for
textiles and garments such as AATCC TM 183:2004 [9] of the United States, AS/NZS
4399:1996 [10] of Australia and New Zealand, BS EN 13758-1:2002 [11] the UK and Europe.
Measurement results, calculated according to the above standards are different but not
significant, so they can be applied to the whole world. Therefore, this study will use AS/NZS
standard 4399:1996 to process the measurement results.
In addition to the T(λ) function obtained from the spectrometer, calculating the UPF
according to equation (2), it is necessary to have the values of the relative radiation spectrum
that produces effective erythema on human skin E(λ) and the radiation spectrum sun S(λ).
With a wavelength range ∆λ = 5 nm, the AS/NZS standard 4399:1996 provides these functions
according to Table 3.

Table 3. Functions E(λ) and S(λ) according to AS/NZS 4399:1996 [10]

Wavelength Relative spectral Spectral irradiance

λ [nm] effectiveness E(λ) S(λ) [Wm-2.nm-1]
290 1.000 0.757 x 10-4
295 1.000 0.134 x 10-2
300 0.649 0.136 x 10-1
305 0.220 0.767 x 10-1
310 0.745 x 10-1 0.172
315 0.252 x 10-1 0.282
320 0.860 x 10-2 0.375
325 0.290 x 10-2 0.494
330 0.136 x 10-2 0.629
335 0.115 x 10-2 0.602
340 0.970 x 10-3 0.675

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Wavelength Relative spectral Spectral irradiance

λ [nm] effectiveness E(λ) S(λ) [Wm-2.nm-1]
345 0.810 x 10-3 0.650
350 0.680 x 10-3 0.692
355 0.580 x 10-3 0.743
360 0.480 x 10-3 0.647
365 0.410 x 10-3 0.849
370 0.340 x 10-3 0.876
375 0.290 x 10-3 0.780
380 0.243 x 10-3 0.902
385 0.204 x 10-3 0.693
390 0.172 x 10-3 0.879
395 0.145 x 10-3 0.693
400 0.122 x 10-3 1.180

Because the structure of the fabric is often hollow, and not as homogeneous as the liquid
solution, measurements for the same sample always have very variable results. The process of
scanning the spectrum for each measurement also takes a long time, so the standards allow the
number of measurements per fabric specimen to be in the range of 4 to 10, the calculated UPF
value is the average of the above measurements.
The calculation volume for each fabric specimen is relatively large, so we designed an
Excel sheet to report the measurement results by automatically calculating the intermediate
values as well as determining the final UPF when pasting the measurement data from the
output *.csv file of the spectrometer in Table 4.
According to formula (2), the numerical element of the spectral multiplication can be
calculated directly from the data in Table 2 as follows:
400
ED =  E( ).S( ). = 0.2863174
 = 290
(3)

The denominator component of the EDm spectrum multiplication is a variable value and
depends on the Ti(λ) function of each measurement.
400
ED m i =  E( ).T ( ).S( ).
 = 290
i (4)

For i = 1 - 10 and ∆λ = 5 nm, formula (4) takes the form of the sum of 23 multiplicative
expressions, so the UPFi value of the worksheet in figure 6 is formatted in Excel by the
formula:

ED 0.2863174
UPFi = = (5)
ED m i ED m i
According to AS/NZS standard 4399:1996, the average UPF of the specimens after many
measurements is determined as follows:
UPF1 + UPF2 + ... + UPFN
UPFtb = (6)
N

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Measure the ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of fabrics on UV-VIS spectrophotometer

Where N = 10 is the number of times to measure or measure 10 specimens for this test
case. The SD standard deviation of the mean UPF is as follows:
N

 (UPF i − UPFtb ) 2
SD = i =1
(7 )
N −1
The Standard Error in the mean UPF, calculated for the 99% confidence level is as
follows:
SD
E = t k .  = 1,03 SD (8)
N
Where
tk. α = t variate (α = 0.005), tk. α = 3.25;
k = N - 1 = 9;
The Rated UPF is as follows:
UPFtt = UPFtb − E (9)
Rated UPF = UPFtb – E
The rated UPF or marked on the label of a textile product as the nominal UPF according
to AS/NZS 4399:1996, AATCC TM 183:2004 or BS EN 13758-1:2002 …is a rounded UPFtt
number smallest integer multiple of 5. If UPF ≥ 55, it is recorded as UPF 50+.

Table 4. Excel sheet reporting UPF measurement results

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3. CONCLUSION

The study showed a way to measure the UPF of fabric on a UV-VIS spectrophotometer
of the Center of Experiment and Practice, data processing according to AS/NZS 4399:1996
standard. Laboratory measurements on 8 fabric samples have shown that this method is
feasible.
Data processing software based on an Excel sheet is relatively easy to use. Each fabric
sample takes 10 measurements and the data link from the spectrophotometer to the final report
is relatively convenient. The process of determining the UPF becomes fast and reliable.
Testing the fabric's UPF at biochemical laboratories in our country with a UV-VIS
spectrophotometer in line with international standards will allow designers of protective
clothing to find the right fabric requirements. Textile and fabric finishing manufacturers will
select appropriate materials and technological processes to ensure the quality of UV protection
products supplied to the garment industry. Fashion merchants and end-users will know the
safety of their clothing when outdoors in extreme weather.
The expansion of measuring equipment in the biochemical laboratory of our HUFI
University to serve research and study for lecturers and students of the textile industry will
serve as the foundation for scientific research projects related to the field of UV protection in
the Faculty of Garment Technology and Fashion in the upcoming period.

Acknowledgments: This research was financially supported by Ho Chi Minh City University
of Food Industry (Contract No. 32/HĐ-DCT. 01/03/2022). The authors would like to thank the
Center of Experiment and Practice (HUFI) supported for doing experiments in this research.

REFERENCES

1. Huynh Van Tri - Fiber and fabric properties - UV resistance, Textile Materials, Ho Chi
Minh City University of Food Industry (2021) 451-455 (in Vietnamese).
2. Sarkar A.K., - Textiles for UV protection. Textiles for protection, Woodhead Publishing
Ltd., England (2005) 355-377.
3. Dubrovski D.P. - Woven Fabrics and Ultraviolet Protection, Woven Fabric Engineering,
Sciyo, India (2010) 273-296.
4. Gambichler T. - Ultraviolet protection of clothing, Functional textiles for improved
performance, protection, and health, Woodhead Publishing Limited (2011) 45-63.
5. Hunter L. - Ultraviolet protection of fabrics and garments. Engineering apparel fabrics
and garments, Woodhead Publishing Ltd., UK (2009) 309-338.
6. Fioletov V., Kerr J. B., Fergusson A. - The UV Index: Definition, Distribution, and
Factors Affecting It. Canadian journal of public health, July (2010). DOI: 10.1016/
j.atmosres. 2012.01.005, accessible at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
47632284.
7. Global Solar UV Index: A Practical Guide, World Health Organization (2002).
8. Beringer J., Mead B. - Test methods for quantifying the UV protection factor of apparel,
sunshades, and awnings, Hohenstein Institute America Inc, accessible at
http://www.Nuima geawnings.com/nuimageawnings/assets/Image/Blog/41116_AT16
_Hohenstein_white paper. pdf
9. AATCC TM 183:2004 - Transmittance or Blocking of Erythemally Weighted
Ultraviolet Radiation through Fabrics.

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10. AS/NZS 4399:1996 - Sun protective clothing - Evaluation and classification.

11. BS EN 13758-1:2002 British Standard Textiles – Solar UV protective properties - Part1:
Method of test for apparel fabrics.
12. Operating Manual photoLabR 7600 UV-VIS Spectrophotometer, Xylem Analytics
Germany GmbH Printed in Germany (2017).

TÓM TẮT

ĐO HỆ SỐ KHÁNG TIA CỰC TÍM (UPF) CỦA VẢI

TRÊN MÁY SPECTROPHOTOMETER UV-VIS

Nguyễn Mai Thanh Thảo*, Huỳnh Văn Trí, Trần Nguyễn Gia Hân
Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Thực phẩm TP.HCM
*Email: thaonmt@hufi.edu.vn

Hệ số kháng UV của vải được ngành dệt may quan tâm ở những năm gần đây trong lĩnh
vực trang phục bảo hộ nhưng thiết bị đo khá hiếm và đắt tiền so với hiệu quả đem lại nên
không thấy chúng trong các phòng thí nghiệm vật liệu dệt may nước ta. Máy đo quang phổ
UV-VIS được trang bị ở các phòng thí nghiệm sinh hóa hay thực phẩm phổ biến dùng để xác
định nồng độ dung dịch hay nhóm hóa học hiện diện trong dung dịch, máy không sử dụng đo
vật liệu rắn. Nghiên cứu này đưa ra phương pháp đo phổ xuyên thấu (transmission) qua vải
trong vùng bức xạ cực tím và xây dựng phần mềm tự động tính hệ số UPF từ kết quả nhận
được trên máy quang phổ UV-VIS ở Trung tâm Thí nghiệm Thực hành - HUFI.
Từ khóa: UPF, UVI, quang phổ kế tử ngoại - khả kiến.

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