Abstract
Respiratory and heart failure are conditions that can occur with little warning and may also be difficult to predict. Therefore continuous monitoring of these bio-signals is advantageous for ensuring human health. The car safety belt is mainly designed to secure the occupants of the vehicle in the event of an accident. In the current research a prototype safety belt is developed, which is used to acquire respiratory and heart signals, under laboratory conditions. The current safety belt is constructed using a copper ink based nonwoven material, which works based on the piezo-resistive effect due to the pressure exerted on the sensor as a result of expansion of the thorax/abdomen area of the body for respiration and due to the principle of ballistocardiography (BCG) in heart signal sensing. In this research, the development of a theoretical model to qualitatively describe the piezo-resistive material is also presented in order to predict the relative change in the resistance of the piezo-resistive material due to the pressure applied.
Highlights
Electronic textiles (e-textiles) are helping existing and conventional electronics to improve their physical flexibility and integration of interconnections to the electronic interface
In the current research, a nonwoven fabric impregnated with a piezo-resistive ink has been used as the cardiorespiratory sensor material integrated into an automobile safety belt
The sensors in the current case were constructed out of a nonwoven piezo-resistive material while electrodes made with silver knitted fabric were used to acquire the electrical signals resulting from the mechanical compression the sensor experiences
Summary
Electronic textiles (e-textiles) are helping existing and conventional electronics to improve their physical flexibility and integration of interconnections to the electronic interface. The capability to use these wearable sensors to ubiquitously monitor the health of patients over a long period of time has gained them much respect in the medical field. In the current research, a nonwoven fabric impregnated with a piezo-resistive ink has been used as the cardiorespiratory sensor material integrated into an automobile safety belt. In review studies conducted by Lux [36] an attempt was carried out to find the factors affecting the percolation concentration. These factors include filler distribution, aspect ratio, filler/matrix interactions and the processing technique [34,37,38,39]. Pham et al [41] and Hu et al [42] revealed that the sensitivity of a nonwoven piezo-resistive sensor can be improved by improving the filler particle loading, degree of filler particle dispersion and sensor fabrication process
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