Smart textiles properties

Smart textiles benefit from intrinsic properties of textiles such as flexibility to conform to the body, comfort to touch, softness, wearability, and the familiarity of the textile (Black, 2007). This offers tremendous opportunities for applications on and close to the body, for example, in well-being and medical contexts such as rehabilitation. Embodiment plays an important role in these contexts the textile industry revolves around materiality and health care practitioners strongly emphasise the bodily abilities of their clients (physical rehabilitation, movement). However, when services... 

Nierstrasz, V., 2012. Surface modification and functionahsation of textile materials Digital finishing for functional and smart textile materials. In EMRS Fall Meeting 2012, Warsaw, Symposium B Renewable Polymers as Multifunctional Materials Properties, Processing, Applications. 

One further and final area of possible development will be in the smart textile field where there is a desire for fibres which may have a heat-sensing property which may then enable them to either alert the wearer (in protective clothing, for instance) or transfer electronic or other signals when embedded in a composite should a potential fire threat arise. This latter will be of increasing importance as the continued increase in use of textile and fibre-reinforced composites replaces conventional materials in the transport sectors, for example. 

The present project has been designed to obtain new smart textiles containing ceramides to confer a regenerative effect to the skin in contact with them based on their repairing properties of the barrier fimction. 

The IWL rich in ceramides are considered promising candidates to be used as active compounds in the next step of the project, in order to obtain the smart textiles with beneficial properties for sensitive skins. 

Smart textiles can address problems previously encountered with textiles, such as self-cleaning fabrics (Shillingford et ah, 2014), or alternatively include new properties not previously associated with textiles. In this second category, sometimes termed... 

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. 

In this chapter we have chosen not to focus on specific examples of smart textiles application in order to avoid narrowing the field of smart implantable fibrous medical devices to a few innovative textile properties. Contrariwise, fiber characteristics are pointed out to show that all of them, in a prospective designing approach, could achieve smart features in the implantable device area. However, we are limited in exploratory areas using new materials because a decline is needed to be certain that a material is accepted by the body. Given the diversity of appreciation of smart appearance, as well as the implantable medical device aspect, we have focused on the biocompatibility and biointegration of substitutes in their environment. This theme therefore needs to be complemented by other approaches such as the concepts of smart attitude and implantable device as related in Fig. 13.1. 

Various textile structures can be employed to design a garment for embedded wearable technology. Fabric structures such as woven, knitted, braided, non-woven and other textile stmctures are possible, depending on the requirements of the system. Each type of system has its unique properties that can play a major role in the functionality of the system. Most of these types of textile structures are used for electronic textiles, such as embroidery and others. Nevertheless, these structures find uses in many smart textiles used today. 

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