Investigation of changes in the electrical properties of novel knitted conductive textiles during cyclic loading

Isaia, Cristina; McNally, Donal; McMaster, Simon A.; Branson, David T.

Abstract

© 2016 IEEE. Combining stainless steel with polyester fibres adds an attractive conductive behaviour to the yarn. Once knitted in such a manner, fabrics develop sensing properties that make the textiles, also known as e-textiles, suitable for smart/wearable applications. Structural deformations of the fibres (e.g. stretching) will cause changes in the conductivity of the fabric. This work investigates changes in the electrical properties exhibited by four knitted conductive textiles made of 20% stainless steel and 80% polyester fibres during cyclic loading. The samples were preconditioned first with 500 hundred cycles of unidirectional elongation and, after a rest interval, tested again for repeatability at the same conditions. In both cases the electrical behaviour stabilises after a few tens of cycles. In particular the repeatability test exhibited a considerably smaller settling time and a larger resistance due to the mechanical stabilisation and the loosening of the fabrics, respectively. It was found that the current provided to the fabrics affects the resistance measurements by decreasing the resistance value at which the samples become electrically stable. The reported findings present a valid method for the electrical characterisation of conductive textiles for use in further studies as a wearable technology.

Citation

Isaia, C., McNally, D., McMaster, S. A., & Branson, D. T. (2016). Investigation of changes in the electrical properties of novel knitted conductive textiles during cyclic loading. In 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC): 16-20 Aug. 2016 (6058-6061). https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592110

• Conference Name: 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)
• Conference Location: Orlando, FL, USA
• Start Date: Aug 16, 2016
• End Date: Aug 20, 2016
• Acceptance Date: May 6, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Oct 18, 2016
• Publication Date: 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 15, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 18, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 6058-6061
• Series ISSN: 1558-4615
• Book Title: 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC): 16-20 Aug. 2016.
• ISBN: 978-1-4577-0219-8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592110
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/804922
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7592110/
• Related Public URLs: http://embc.embs.org/2016/
• Additional Information: © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.