Abstract
Sports bras are critical to the comfort and performance of female athletes, yet mechanical models of sports bras are generally not used to guide their design. Typically, assessing any sports bra’s performance requires time-consuming and expensive biomechanical testing, which limits the number of designs considered. To more broadly advance knowledge on how different design properties of sports bras affect their performance, this paper presents a new design framework to explore and evaluate the sports bra design space. The framework incorporates methods for body scan analysis, fast simulation, design generation, and performance evaluation. Using these methods together enables the rapid exploration of hundreds, or thousands, of designs—each one having been evaluated on key metrics related to sports bra performance, namely, range of motion and average pressure. With this framework, designers can potentially discover a diverse set of new, high-performing sports bra concepts, as well as gain insights into how design decisions affect performance.
Highlights
IntroductionSports Bras and the Impact of Breasts
Women who become athletes regardless of this barrier may still find their breasts negatively affect their performance—a 2012 study of the London Marathon showed that women with larger breasts on average finished slower than their smaller-chested counterparts [5]
The goal of collecting measurements from body scans within this framework is to give designers access to any information they may need in order to create well-fitting sports bras, as fit has been shown to be critical to their perceived comfort and performance
Summary
Sports Bras and the Impact of Breasts. The sports bra is an essential piece of equipment for women, and yet it is a product that was first invented only 45 years ago. In 1975, the first sports bra was made by sewing two jockstraps together. The jockstrap was invented a hundred years earlier in 1874 [1]. Sports bras have come a long way since 1975 and the industry continues to grow [2], but there is still room for innovation and improvement, as women continue to experience mastalgia (breast pain) during exercise [3]. Breasts can be a significant barrier to sport for women, especially for those with greater breast volume [4]. Women who become athletes regardless of this barrier may still find their breasts negatively affect their performance—a 2012 study of the London Marathon showed that women with larger breasts on average finished slower than their smaller-chested counterparts [5]
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