Smart textiles wearability

D fabrics, panels, and preforms are being increasingly used in aerospace, medical, automotive, armored vehicles, marine, boat and shipbuilding, construction, wind energy, electronic textiles (E-textiles) and smart textiles wearables, and other industrial applications. 

Dalsgaard, C., Sterrett, R., 2014. White Paper on Smart Textile Garments and Devices A Market Review of Smart Textile Wearable Technologies. Ohmatex, Denmark. 

McAdams E.T., McLaughlin J, Anderson J McC., Wearable and implantable monitoring systems 10 years experience at University of Ulster Proc. Wearable Electronic and Smart Textiles Confi, Leeds, UK, 2004. 

In terms of market opportunities, and referring to both the application method and the textile as a substrate, the need for functional prints and coatings that enable the development of smart textiles and wearable electronics will be rising and will move from 30% predominantiy printed and 6% on nonrigid substrates to 45% predominantly printed and 33% on nonrigid substrates by 2022 (Ghaffarzadeh, 2013). 

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... 

Table 7.1 Overview of propositions that can be considered smart textile services from the Vandrico Wearable Tech Market database (Vandrico Solutions Inc., 2015)... 

Kirstein, T., Lawrence, M., Troster, G., 2003. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) with smart textile electrodes. In International Workshop on a New Generation Of Wearable Systems for E-health, Pisa, Italy. 

Ropert, A., 2013. Wearable electronics 2.0, presentation. In Session Smart Textiles - From Research to Products, Avantex Symposium, Frankfurt, Germany, 11.06.2013. 

Hertleer, C., Grabowska, M., Van Langenhove, L., Catrysse, M., Hermans, B., Phiers, R., Kalmar, A., Van Egmond, H., Matthys, D., 2004. Towards a smart suit. In Wearable Electronic and Smart Textiles, 11th June, Leeds, UK. 

Belforte, B., Quaglia, G., Testore, E., Eula, G., Appendino, S., 2007. Wearable textiles for rehabilitation of disabled patients using pneumatic systems. In Van Langenhove, L. (Ed.), Smart Textile for Medicine and Healthcare. Woodhead Pubhshing. 

Textiles are not only to protect/cover or skin but show self-expression, taste, and personality of the wearer. They can also demonstrate socioeconomic status and cultural movements. Moreover, in the modem fashion world, textiles are highly relied on for their beauty and aesthetic appeal. Recent advancements in wearable devices have extended the functionality of textile materials to smart textiles. Now the term smart textiles is referred to as active or passive depending on the placement of actuators. If the actuator is embedded in the textile, then it is active otherwise is passive. Smart textiles play a key role in our day-to-day life, including the fields of health monitoring, personal trackers, military use, education, home appliances, transportation, gaming, entertainment, and music. Table 9.3 shows the applications of smart/inteUigent textiles to various areas. 

Among the various categories of smart textiles and flexible materials, which include optically, mechanically, chemically, electrically, and thermally activated substances/ stmctures (Tao, 2001), several have shown large opportunities of applications in PPE. This includes wearable electronics, for example, physiological condition, temperature, and humidity sensors, power and data transmitters, and end-of-life indicators, which are the subject of the next chapter of this book. Various types of smart flexible materials have also found their way into PPE, for instance, as responsive barriers, self-decontaminating membranes, thermoregulating layers, and shock-absorbing patches. 

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