Technical Textiles: The Innovative Approach

26-27 April 2004. Weston Conference Centre, UMIST,
Manchester ( UK )

Report by David J. Tyler

Technical Textiles is reputed to be a textile success story, with significantly higher growth figures when compared with many other industrial sectors. The conference brought together experts from the areas of: Fibres, Intelligent and Smart Textiles, Industrial Textiles, Medical Textiles, Automotive Textiles, Geotextiles and Protective Textiles. In the report below, topics of particular interest to technical clothing are highlighted.

Keynote Speech: "Picky, Picky, Picky!"
Joe Cunning (National Textiles Center, USA) commented that human expectations of R&D are exceptionally high. This is as true of managers of R&D as it is of consumers. The expectations are fueled by the successes of information technologies - where we can get instant responses with low cost. Companies and brands that offer consumer choice at a competitive cost are gaining market share. The new driver for smart wearables is sports clothing. Examples of high-tech products satisfying the "picky" consumer expectations were reviewed: the golfer shirt that provides feedback on technique (from MIT); dri-release by Optimer, and nano-technology enhancements affecting ski-jackets and sporting accessories (as featured in the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report for December 2003).

Session I: Fibres

Fibres for Technical Performance
Samir Mukhopadhyay (SANS Fibres, South Africa) presented an overview of the fibres used within Technical Textiles. Even when choices were limited to natural fibres, materials were selected because of their technical performance. Now that fibres can be engineered, the options are greatly increased. New fibres have been developed to enhance particular properties: load carrying strength, impact strength, resistance to cutting, energy absorption, high temperature protection, electrical conductivity, etc. Not only are fibres engineered, but so also are fabrics and the end-use products. The science of fabricating these engineering structures is still poorly understood, but this is simply the challenge facing the technical textiles community.

Session II - Intelligent and Smart Textiles

A Platform for Personalized Mobile Information Processing
Sundaresan Jayaraman (Georgia Unstitute of Technology, USA) spoke on a shirt that seeks to optimise the performance of wearers: involving information gathering, intelligent processing, instantaneous action and with the potential for interactivity. For all this, interfaces are the key. The Smart Shirt was described and the interface.

The Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard™ uses optical fibers to detect bullet wounds, and special sensors and interconnects to monitor the body vital signs during combat conditions. This Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard (Smart Shirt) provides an extremely versatile framework for the incorporation of sensing, monitoring and information processing devices. The principal advantage of Smart Shirt is that it provides, for the first time, a systematic way of monitoring the vital signs of humans in an unobtrusive manner. Appropriate sensors have been "plugged" into this motherboard and attached to any part of the individual being monitored, thereby creating a flexible wearable monitoring device. The flexible data bus integrated into the structure transmits the information to monitoring devices such as an EKG Machine, a temperature recorder, a voice recorder, etc. The bus also serves to transmit information to the sensors (and hence, the wearer) from external sources, thus making Smart Shirt a valuable information infrastructure.

Reference was made to Newsweek International's piece on electronic textiles (e-textiles), "Wearing Wires. A New Fabric May Make Clothing Both High Tech and Fashionable" in its June 30/July 7 2003 issue.

Function and Performance of Knitted Electrodes
Paul Beatty of the University of Manchester and Tilak Dias of UMIST spoke of the need for better "outreach monitoring" for hospitals and community care. Tools are needed for early diagnosis of problems, predictive monitoring and health promotion. Their research is to develop a user-friendly garment that can sense a range of body signals that are medically important. The prototype is a multi-layer sensory knitted garment. The inner layer has the sensors, the middle layer provides for the transmission of signals and the outer layer is the inert external surface. Sensors are currently made of stainless stell and work focusses on heart signals. The problem of electrical noise is currently being addressed.

Intelligent Textiles - are we overlooking the Basics?
Stewart Collie of Canesis Limited drew attention to an article in the March/April issue of WSA: "Electo interest rekindled". The author wrote: " Given the speed of development in both the electronics and garment industries it is disappointing to consider the paucity of onward developments in the 'wearable communications sector". Why have developments been slow to be commercialised? Three main reasons were suggested.
1. General drop in consumer demand. This has led brandowners to pull back on products deemed risky.
2. Secrecy of many developments. In particular, much work has been done with military objectives.
3. Failures in development are numerous (which is no reflection on the technologies. (Wearing electronics is not the same as wearable electronics!).These development problems were analysed in four categories.

(a) Use of inappropriate materials. Materials may not have the required durability: there may be poor environmental stability, or they may not compare well with textiles in their strength and flexibility characteristics.
(b) Components are not truly wearable. This is because textile properties may be compromised by the use of wires, cables, rigid films, etc.
(c) Health and Safety concerns. The manufacture or processing of new materials may require protective equipment, and in use, there may be electric currents or electromagnetic fields that have not been properly researched in terms of any health impacts
(d) Marketing hype. There has been a tendency to exaggerate the closeness of these developments to commercial reality.

The Canesis philosophy has been "do not overlook the basics!"
- have a strong commercial focus
- make use of existing production technology
- carry out performance testing at an early stage
- ensure true wearablity and minimise compromise

The outworking of this philosophy was illustrated by references to several products which Canesis, and its Softswitch division, have been involved with in recent years. For example, last year saw Burton Snowboards and Apple® unveil the limited-edition Burton Amp, the world's first wearable electronic jacket with an integrated iPod™ control system enabled by SOFTswitch™ technology. Reference was made to "wireless" heated textiles, textile illumination and display screens, the use of electrically-conductive polymer composites, and wearables with actuators and sensors.

Session V: Protective Textiles

Recent Advances in Military Chemical Protective Clothing
Colin Willis of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory described the early suits for chemical protection based on impregnants that destroyed toxic liquids and vapurs on contact. Later, nonwovens impregnated with activated carbon were used. The advances reported were concerned with test methods and the subsequent impact on suit design. An articulated mannequin covered with calibrated dosimeters is used and this has alerted researchers to design issues to be addressed in body protection. In parallel with this, DSTL has been working on liquid-repellant treatments using plasma polymerization techniques. These can be applied to practically any material - wood, metal, glass, textiles, plastics - to form a coating that is remarkably liquid repellent. With textile substrates, durable and efficient liquid-repellant finishes can be created that are unaffected by dry-cleaning and de-greasing solvents. This is leading to the next generation of military chemical protective clothing - and there are opoportunities for commercial applications of these technologies.

The conference covered a very broad range of application of technical textiles: those in this report are of most interest to apparel producers.

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Prepared May 2004