Smart Textiles and Their Applications

Vladan Koncar

• Éditeur: Woodhead Publishing
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780081005835
• Sujet: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Sous-sujet: Werkstoffwissenschaft

Smart Textiles and Their Applications outlines the fundamental principles of applied smart textiles, also reporting on recent trends and research developments. Scientific issues and proposed solutions are presented in a rigorous and constructive way that fully presents the various results, prototypes, and case-studies obtained from academic and industrial laboratories worldwide.

After an introduction to smart textiles and their applications from the editor, Part One reviews smart textiles for medical purposes, including their use in health monitoring, treatment delivery, and assistive technologies. Part Two covers smart textiles for transportation and energy, with chapters covering smart textiles for the monitoring of structures and processes, as well as smart textiles for energy generation.

The final section considers smart textiles for protection, security, and communication, and includes chapters covering electrochromic textile displays, textile antennas, and smart materials for personal protective equipment.

• Scientific issues and proposed solutions are presented in a rigorous and constructive way regarding various results, prototypes, and case-studies obtained from academic and industrial laboratories worldwide
• Useful for researchers and postgraduate students, and also for existing companies and start-ups that are developing products involving smart textiles
• Authored and edited by an international team who are experts in the field ensure comprehensive coverage and global relevance

1

Introduction to smart textiles and their applications

V. Koncar GEMTEX, ENSAIT, Roubaix, France University Lille North of France, Lille, France

Abstract

Smart textiles can be defined as textiles that are able to sense and respond to changes in their environment. They may be divided into two classes: passive and active smart textiles.

The scope of this book is focused on smart textiles that are classified according to their main fields of application: (1) medical, (2) transportation and energy and (3) protection, security communication and textile electronics. The objective is to present the latest research results together with basic concepts related to the most promising applications.

This book highlights, for the first time, all the main fields of applications of smart textiles. The scientific issues and proposed solutions regarding various results, prototypes and achievements obtained in the best academic and industrial laboratories worldwide are presented in a rigorous scientific way. At the same time, practical solutions and their realization, believed to be of the interest to industrial partners, are presented and explained in the second part of chapters. The book should be useful for researchers and students in academia, as well as for companies and start-ups that are developing products using the concept of smart textiles.

Keywords

Electronic textiles; Intelligent apparel; Sensors; Shape memory; Smart textiles

1.1. Definitions of smart textiles

Smart textiles can be defined as textiles that are able to sense and respond to changes in their environment. They may be divided into two classes: passive and active smart textiles. Passive smart textiles have the ability to change their properties according to an environmental stimulation. Shape memory materials, hydrophobic or hydrophilic textiles, etc. are part of this category.

Active smart textiles are fitted with sensors and actuators in order to connect internal parameters to the transmitted message. They are able to detect different signals from the environment such as temperature, light intensity and pollution to decide how to react and finally to act using various textile-based, flexible, or miniaturized actuators (textile displays, microvibrating devices, light-emitting diode (LED), organic light-emitting diode (OLED)). The ‘decision’ can occur locally in case of embedded electronic devices (textile electronics) to smart textile structures or remotely in case the smart textile is wirelessly connected to clouds containing data base, servers with artificial intelligence software, etc.

1.1.1. In the beginning

The concept of a ‘smart material’ was for the first time defined in Japan in 1989. The first textile material that, in retroaction, was labelled as a smart textile was silk thread having a shape memory. The discovery of shape memory materials in the 1960s and intelligent polymeric gels in the 1970s are generally accepted as the birth of real smart materials. It was not until the late 1990s that intelligent materials were introduced in textiles. The first research related to communicative textiles was done in late 1990s and the first textile electronic semiconductive components were produced in the early 2000s.

1.1.2. The situation today

Today's dynamic market segments such as digital, health, transportation, energy or security have an important added value that may be captured by textiles as supports. Currently, the value of 1 kg of technical textiles is estimated at US$5.3 compared to US$3.4 for nonwoven textiles and US$10.5 for textile composites. The smart textile market is also rapidly growing. Fig. 1.1 shows the projected growth of the global market for smart, intelligent, digital and interactive fabrics and textiles from 2012 to 2018. The global market for smart fabrics is forecast to grow to around 2 billion US dollars by 2018.

Figure 1.1 The global market forecast for smart, intelligent, digital and interactive fabrics and textiles from 2012 to 2018 in billion US dollars. Reproduced from Statista (www.statista.com)

On the other side, the market of connected objects that is also called the ‘Internet of Things’ or ‘Internet of Stuff’ will probably contain 30 billion devices connected in 2020, and 10% of those things will be clothes. If these figures are realistic, it means that in 2020 about 3 billion articles of clothing will be connected and will use some aspects of smart textiles such as sensors or actuators together with emitters, receivers and units of computation. The market share of smart textiles in that case will be even larger than the aforementioned statistics (Fig. 1.1) have forecasted. These figures are very encouraging for the textile industry globally and indicate important changes in our way of life. Social networks have introduced a completely new approach to interactions among human beings. New services such as Uber, BlaBlaCar, Airbandb, crowd funding, etc. have radically modified the economy and the cost of transportation, accommodations, etc.

Recently Google's Project Jacquard (https://www.google.com/atap/project-jacquard/) has started in order to make it possible to weave touch and gesture interactivity into any textile using standard, industrial looms. This should be realized thanks to new conductive yarns. The complementary components will be engineered to be as discreet as possible. Innovative techniques to attach the conductive yarns to connectors and tiny circuits, no larger than the button on a jacket, are under development. These miniaturized electronics capture touch interactions, and various gestures can be inferred using machine-learning algorithms.

Captured touch and gesture data are wirelessly transmitted to mobile phones or other devices to control a wide range of functions, connecting the user to online services, apps or phone features. Jacquard yarns have to be indistinguishable from the traditional yarns that are used to produce fabrics today.

1.1.3. The future and perspectives

It is always challenging and risky to predict the future. Nevertheless, smart textiles will probably develop in two different and parallel ways.

The first one could be called ‘low-cost smart textiles’ that will be produced for the general public and integrated mostly into clothes and home textiles; the second one will be dedicated to special uses with higher cost and better added value. Today we can see just a few products available in the market; smart textiles have not yet been fully developed, particularly from the point of view of reliability, and they are not really ready for the market. There are hundreds and hundreds of prototypes that are more or less reliable, in research laboratories, but the scale-up has not yet been done. Therefore, an important effort is necessary to put some of those prototypes to the market, to make them more robust and reliable and probably most importantly to produce them in large series at low cost.

1.2. Main domains of applications

This book highlights all the main fields of applications of smart textiles. The scientific issues and proposed solutions regarding various results, prototypes and achievements obtained in the best academic and industrial laboratories worldwide are discussed in a rigorous scientific manner. At the same time practical solutions and realization, intended to be of interest to industrial partners, are presented and explained in the second part of chapters. Therefore, the book should be useful for researchers and students in academia as well as also for existing companies and start-ups that are developing products using the concept of smart textiles.

The book is organized in three parts containing chapters on smart textiles for medical purposes; transportation and energy; and finally protection, security, communication and textile electronics.

1.2.1. Smart textiles for medical purposes

Medical applications are diverse and cover a large range of needs for textile structures from bed sheets, surgical clothing and bandages to more complex textiles such as light-emitting fabrics used for photodynamic therapy, stents, composite heart valves or blood vessels. The objective of this part of the book is to introduce the latest and most advanced achievements in the field of complex textile structures used for medical purposes. The area of medical research is very demanding, and clinical trials are always necessary to validate smart textiles that will be used repeatedly. Several structures presented in chapters of this section are currently in clinical trials, meaning that their use in hospitals and clinics on a large scale is imminent.

1.2.2. Smart textiles for transportation and energy

The transportation sector, including ground transportation (automotive and railway) and aerospace (airplanes, satellites, spaceships, etc.), is a very important field of applications for smart textiles. Today's most important target is the decrease of the weight of vehicles and planes in order to improve their efficiency and behaviour. Textile composites are rapidly developing, and textile manufacturing technologies such as weaving, knitting and braiding or even hybridized approaches are increasingly used for 3D-composite reinforcement design and manufacturing. Yet, composite parts and particularly structural ones have to be monitored in real time in situ for security purposes and predictive maintenance. Therefore, smart and communicative composites with embedded sensors, connected to supervision devices, are able to monitor in real time the solidity of the structure and to alert in case of problems (predictive maintenance) will be a reality in the next few years.

Energy issues are more and more important today. Smart textiles may offer important contributions for energy harvesting and production (flexible photovoltaic cells, wind mills, piezoelectric yarns) and for energy storage (super capacitors, flexible batteries).

1.2.3. Smart textiles for protection, security, communication and other electronics

Security and protection of persons and objects are topics of particular significance for smart textiles. Firemen's uniforms, police and military equipment, and ballistic structures with embedded multilayer textiles are some examples of where smart textile devices have found their effectiveness. Many other future possibilities arise, for example clothing that is able to detect apnoea problems of babies or swim suits that might alert exposure to a high level of UVA rays.

1.2.4. Other fields of application

Textile electronics is another exciting area of application. Fibrous diodes and transistors have already been developed in different laboratories. Flexible sensors and actuators (textile displays, heating fabrics) will in the future be part of our clothes, car interiors and home textiles. Therefore, flexible textile-based electronic circuits will be fully integrated to fabrics and connected to databases and servers making possible new ways to utilize clothing and other textiles.

1.3. Smart textiles and their readiness for the market

The demand for intelligent materials to develop electronic textiles (e-textiles) and smart apparel is rapidly growing up for industrial applications such as sensors, electrostatic discharge, steel corrosion, electromagnetic interference shielding, dust-free clothing, monitoring, military applications and data transfer in clothing and all other fields of applications mentioned in this book. Therefore, it is important to modify the properties of textile structures by creating novel materials that react to external stimuli for these kinds of applications.

Building blocks that have to be used in order to realize these new generations of textile structures are mentioned and analysed from the textile point of view. A classification of innovative communicative and intelligent functions attributed to smart textiles is also developed.

Various emerging technologies that allow integration of electronic devices into garment and the textile accessories are analysed and presented in the book.

Initially, and from a purely technical point of view, the smart textile concept may be perceived as the result of a convergence between two industries: textiles and electronics. The miniaturization of electronics makes it possible for people to carry with th...

Table des matières

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• The Textile Institute and Woodhead Publishing
• Copyright
• List of contributors
• Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles
• 1. Introduction to smart textiles and their applications
• 2. Smart textiles in health: An overview
• 3. Smart shirt for obstacle avoidance for visually impaired persons
• 4. Light emitting textiles for a photodynamic therapy
• 5. Controlled release of active agents from microcapsules embedded in textile structures
• 6. Medical back belt with neuromuscular electrical stimulation
• 7. Communication protocols for vital signs sensors used for the monitoring of athletes
• 8. Shape memory compression system for management of chronic venous disorders
• 9. Wearable body sensor network for health care applications
• 10. Bioinspired control of a multifingered robot hand with musculoskeletal system
• 11. Psychotextiles and their interaction with the human brain
• 12. Fiber-based hybrid structures as scaffolds and implants for regenerative medicine
• 13. Smart features in fibrous implantable medical devices
• 14. Smart textiles for structural health monitoring of composite structures
• 15. Carbon fibre sensors embedded in glass fibre-based composites for windmill blades
• 16. A complex shaped-reinforced thermoplastic composite part made of commingled yarns with an integrated sensor
• 17. Fibrous sensors to help the monitoring of weaving process
• 18. Flexible photovoltaic cells embedded into textile structures
• 19. Developing thermophysical sensors with textile auxiliary wall
• 20. Performance of different types of yarn electrodes in PEDOT: PSS charge storage devices
• 21. Lightguide fibres–based textile for solar energy collection and propagation
• 22. Smart materials for personal protective equipment: Tendencies and recent developments
• 23. Wearable technologies for personal protective equipment: Embedded textile monitoring sensors, power and data transmission, end-life indicators
• 24. Electrochromic textile displays for personal communication
• 25. Textile electronic circuits based on organic fibrous transistors
• 26. Latest developments in the field of textile antennas
• 27. The design of smart garments for motion capture and activity classification
• 28. Electroconductive textiles and textile-based electromechanical sensors—integration in as an approach for smart textiles
• Index