Smart Textiles Production

The research field of smart textiles is currently witnessing

a rapidly growing number of applications

integrating intelligent functions in textile substrates.

With an increasing amount of new developed product

prototypes, the number of materials used and that of

specially designed production technologies are also

growing.

This book is intended to provide an overview of materials,

production technologies, and product concepts

to different groups concerned with smart textiles. It

will help designers to understand the possibilities of

smart textile production, so that they are enabled to

design this type of products. It will also help textile

and electronics manufacturers to understand which

production technologies are suitable to meet certain

product requirements.

After an introduction to smart textiles and their market

relevance, different material types for functional

textiles are described along with their properties,

application areas, and product examples. Special

attention is given to materials for the realization of

electrical conductivity in textiles, as these are crucial

for the following overview on sensor and production

technologies. Next, textile-based sensors are

introduced. While numerous textile-based sensors,

ranging from sensing fibers to coatings and three-dimensional

structures, have been developed, their

specific properties and usage are not clear. Bosowski

et al. have suggested a structure for a classified catalogue

as knowledge basis to support the smart textile

product development process. This chapter develops

the classification further and implements it in a catalogue

to be used by practitioners from research and

industry when developing and designing textiles with

sensing capabilities. The full catalogue is reported in

the appendix. The third part of the book starts by describing

the state of the art of research on production

technologies for the integration of conductive materials

into textile substrates, which include weaving,

knitting, embroidering, printing, without mentioning

specific products. Different variants of each technology

are presented. Additionally, associated technologies

to integrate electrical components in textile substrates

are outlined. This part closes by reporting the

current state of research on automated production

systems for electronics integration into textiles. In the

last part of the book, product and design concepts

for smart textiles are evaluated along the example of

touchpads.