Smart Textiles Production

<p>The research field of smart textiles is currently witnessing<br />a rapidly growing number of applications<br />integrating intelligent functions in textile substrates.<br />With an increasing amount of new developed product<br />prototypes the number of materials used and that of<br />specially designed production technologies are also<br />growing.<br />This book is intended to provide an overview of materials<br />production technologies and product concepts<br />to different groups concerned with smart textiles. It<br />will help designers to understand the possibilities of<br />smart textile production so that they are enabled to<br />design this type of products. It will also help textile<br />and electronics manufacturers to understand which<br />production technologies are suitable to meet certain<br />product requirements.<br />After an introduction to smart textiles and their market<br />relevance different material types for functional<br />textiles are described along with their properties<br />application areas and product examples. Special<br />attention is given to materials for the realization of<br />electrical conductivity in textiles as these are crucial<br />for the following overview on sensor and production<br />technologies. Next textile-based sensors are<br />introduced. While numerous textile-based sensors<br />ranging from sensing fibers to coatings and three-dimensional<br />structures have been developed their<br />specific properties and usage are not clear. Bosowski<br />et al. have suggested a structure for a classified catalogue<br />as knowledge basis to support the smart textile<br />product development process. This chapter develops<br />the classification further and implements it in a catalogue<br />to be used by practitioners from research and<br />industry when developing and designing textiles with<br />sensing capabilities. The full catalogue is reported in<br />the appendix. The third part of the book starts by describing<br />the state of the art of research on production<br />technologies for the integration of conductive materials<br />into textile substrates which include weaving<br />knitting embroidering printing without mentioning<br />specific products. Different variants of each technology<br />are presented. Additionally associated technologies<br />to integrate electrical components in textile substrates<br />are outlined. This part closes by reporting the<br />current state of research on automated production<br />systems for electronics integration into textiles. In the<br />last part of the book product and design concepts<br />for smart textiles are evaluated along the example of<br />touchpads.</p>