EVALUATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELASTIC AND ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CONDUCTIVE TEXTILES

Abstract

Smart textiles are fabrics that interact intelligently with nearby surroundings or consumers. The electronic textile (e-textile) can sense environmental circumstances or stimuli and provide information that can effectively respond to and adapt actions. An electrically conductive textile is a piece of smart textile that incorporates conductive fibres, yarns, fabrics, and ultimate products. Conductivity is one of the properties that allow the integration of textiles in electrical circuits to ensure the functionality of electronic devices. The integration of conductive yarns in a structure is a complex and seldom a uniform process as it needs to be ensured that the electrically conductive fabric is comfortable to wear or soft to touch rather than hard and rigid. The paper presents an original method for determining the relationship between the conductivity of conductive textile structures and their elastic characteristics. Statex and Bekinox conductive yarns of fineness 296-610 dtex were used to make woven and knitted structures. The SEM and EDAX analyses of the wires were carried out on the Scanning microscope Quanta FEI 200. The physical-mechanical characteristics analyzed highlighted: strength (N) and elongation at break (%), tear resistance (N), resistance to deformation (kPa) and deformation (mm) of the conductive structures. The modulus of elasticity (N/cm2) and anisotropy was calculated. The correlation coefficients between the three variables have high values (>0.980). The Lloyd material testing equipment coupled with a data acquisition unit-DAQ (white box) was used for the simultaneous variation of elasticity and electrical conductivity of textile structures.

Keywords

• textile
• conductivity
• elasticity
• deformation
• correlation