Wearable Clothing Research Articles

Interface engineered silver nanoparticles decorated g-C3N4 nanosheets for textile based triboelectric nanogenerators as wearable power sources

Textile based mechanical energy harvesting devices have emerged out as potential power sources for wearable electronics. For the first time, we report the fabrication of a textile based triboelectric nanogenerator (T-TENG) composed of an active layer of silver (Ag) nanoparticles loaded graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets on carbon fibres. The triboelectric characteristics has been found to be dramatically enhanced upon combinatorial effect of Ag nanoparticles loading and interfacial engineering with the introduction of a nylon layer between nanosheets and carbon cloth fibres. With teflon as a counter triboelectric material, under mechanical agitation, the AgCN/nylon bi-layer T-TENG can generate an open circuit voltage of as high as ~ 200 V and charges a commercial capacitor up to ~85 V in only 30 s. The improvement in triboelectric characteristics of the AgCN based bi-layer T-TENG is attributed to Ag nanoparticles induced modifications of surface area, dielectric properties and intrinsic resistivity of the host material. Apart from mechanical impact, the T-TENG can generate electrical output under minute mechanical forces originating from sources like air flow and biomechanical actions when integrated to wearable clothing and the output data can be accessed remotely. The AgCN/nylon-teflon based bi-layer T-TENG is not only stable at higher operating temperatures but also exhibits a higher power conversion efficiency at an elevated temperature (up to ~65 °C), which could be explained by the energetics of the composite system. The superior output characteristics as well as thermal stability of AgCN/nylon based triboelectric nanogenerator makes it a potential candidate for integration into textile based wearable electronic devices.

Development of realistic scale model auditors

Scale model auditors in previous researches have frequently been adopted to simplify the shape and roughly approximate the sound absorption of a real human auditor with limited amount of clothing in a seated state. As the importance of acoustic design has been emphasized not only in concert halls and theatres, but also in rock and pop venues where stood auditors dominate floors, it is necessary to look into the sound absorption of auditors in a wider range beyond the existing framework. In the present work, a new approach through a sequential process from the body skins to the amount of clothing is employed to develop a realistic scale model auditor. In comparison with full-scale results, five types of independent auditors being separated from chairs and capable of standing or sitting are successfully constructed with various amount of wearable clothing. Furthermore, the effects of clothing on the absorption characteristics of auditors are presented in the sparse standing and densely seated conditions. A series of experiments to examine the validity of the developed scale model auditors for both sparse standing and densely seated states confirmed that the sound absorption characteristics of model auditors are well accordance with full-scale results.

Semiconductor nano materials in the reconstruction of wearable human body sensor

In view of the shortcomings of the current wearable human body sensor, such as poor comfort and low sensing accuracy, the application of semiconductor nano materials in the reconstruction of wearable human body sensor is studied. The best zinc concentration of 10 mm and the best reaction temperature of 75∘C were selected as experimental conditions to prepare the modified silk. The two ends of the silk sensor were connected by silver glue and wire respectively to form a single silk sensor. The sensor is placed in the wearable clothing of the wearable human body sensor, which uses the sensor to sense the physiological signal of human body and sends it to the control center. The central processing unit of the control center uses the data eigenvalue fusion decision-making method of BP neural network to process the physiological data of human body and then transmits it to the display terminal to realize the physiological data induction of human body. The experimental results show that the human body sensor can effectively sense human heart rate, blood oxygen signal, blood pressure and other physiological signals, and the sensing accuracy is above 97%.

An Efficient Machine Learning based Model for Classification of Wearable Clothing

Computer vision research and its applications in the fashion industry have grown popular due to the rapid growth of information technology. Fashion detection is increasingly popular because most fashion goods need detection before they could be worn. Early detection of the human body component of the input picture is necessary to determine where the garment area is and then synthesize it. For this reason, detection is the starting point for most of the in-depth research. The cloth detection of landmarks is retrieved through many feature items that emphasis on fashionate things. The feature extraction can be done for better accuracy, pose and scale transmission. These convolution filters extract the features through many epochs and max-pooling layers in the neural networks. The optimized classification has been done using SVM in this study, for attaining overall high efficiency. This proposed CNN approach fashionate things prediction is combined with SVM for better classification. Furthermore, the classification error is minimized through the evaluation procedure for obtaining better accuracy. Finally, this research work has attained good accuracy and other performance metrics than the different traditional approaches. The benchmark datasets, current methodologies, and performance comparisons are all reorganized for each piece.

A survey of wearable energy harvesting systems

Recently, we have witnessed a remarkable proliferation of wearables in various smart applications. These applications include smart healthcare, smart military, smart infotainment, and smart industries, to name a few. However, wearables suffer from significant energy limitations. To cope with this challenging issue, energy harvesting can be a viable solution. In this paper, various ambient sources like heat, vibration, radio waves, and solar energy are compared and critically analyzed based on size, voltage, frequency, power density, and power. Critical analysis of vibrational, solar, heat, radiofrequency, and hybrid show convincing output results, but a hybrid solar wearable energy harvester (SWEH) and thermoelectric wearable energy harvester (TWEH) give a maximum output power of 501 mW. However, piezoelectric clothes fabrication is growing and coming out to be a good competitor because of flexibility and comfort. Work has been done on the hybridization of wearable clothes to generate maximum power and is good enough for wearable applications. On the other side, solar individually is enough to power wearable devices but for a specific time. In the radiofrequency still, research is required because of very low power generation or a flexible array can be integrated into a dress or certain other technique maybe adapted for flexible yet more power generation capability. Overall sizes of the reported wearable energy harvesters are in the millimeter to centimeter scale, with resonant frequencies in the range of 1 to 1400 Hz, while rectenna wearable energy harvester (RWEH) exceeds the limit and is reported in the range of 1.8 to 3.2 GHz. A maximum energy conversion for a piezoelectric wearable energy harvester can potentially reach up to 29.7 μW/cm3 and 14.28 μW/cm2. The power produced by the reported hybrid energy harvesters (HEHs) is in the range of 0.00012 to 501 mW. Due to the combined solar-thermoelectric energy conversion in HEHs, these systems are capable of producing the highest power densities.

Preparation and Characterisation of Temperature Regulating Silk Cocoon Extract (Sericin)/PVA Based Smart fabric

Smart fabrics help to regulate body heat and provide thermal comfort to the body. Hence from many decades research on heat transfer analysis and temperature regulating wearable clothing takes important place. Hence, here we developed green, simplistic and economical sericin/PVA film using industrial waste sericin along with PVA. For this, the fabrication of sericin/PVA was carried out by employing polymer solution casting method and slow evaporation method by varying the sericin concentration by keeping PVA constant that is in the ratio of 2:1, 1:1. Characterization techniques like X ray diffraction, and UV visible spectroscopy were carried out and fluorescence effect were studied. This research showed that higher concentration sericin/PVA film can effectively absorb phonons of UV radiation and convert into fluorescence light thereby maintaining the temperature of the film/fabric. Hence this film/fabric can be used in industries where workers are constantly exposed to harmful UV radiations.

Wearable Devices and Diagnostic Apps: Beyond the Borders of Traditional Medicine, But What About Their Accuracy and Reliability?

Nowadays people are willing to self-monitor their health status, and when they do not feel well, they tend to ask Dr. Google for a diagnosis (over a third of adults go online to analyze or look for information about a health condition [1]). People trust technology, often more than physicians; smartphone and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are undoubtedly making innovative monitoring and diagnostic devices rapidly progress, so much that it seems that the future of medicine is in smartphones, where apps may run and to which devices can be connected, hence supporting mobile health (m-Health) [2]. In addition to smartwatches and wrist-worn devices that are surely the most common wearable devices [3], [4], there are also connected wearable clothes [5], socks [6], rings, or glasses-type wearables [7].

Personal Thermal Management by Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Functionalized Polyester Fabrics.

In this work, a personal thermal management (PTM) device based on single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) functionalized polyester fabrics had been studied. Polyester fabrics were functionalized with SWCNTs through coating method with poly (butyl acrylate) emulsion as the adhesive. The SEM images exhibited that SWCNTs formed high-efficiently conductive networks due to the large aspect ratio and uniform dispersion. A steady-state temperature of 40 °C was achieved at the input voltage of 2.5 V within 7 s, which exhibited excellent electro-thermal performance. Even under periodic heating-cooling conditions, heating system still displayed relatively stable temperature and relative resistance, which could have potential application for wearable clothes.

A review of noteworthy/major innovations in wearable clothing for thermal and moisture management from material to fabric structure

The human body exchanges heat through the environment by various means, such as radiation, evaporation, conduction, and convection. Thermo-physiological comfort is associated with the effective heat transfer between the body and the atmosphere, maintaining the body temperature in a tolerable thermal range (36.5–37.5ºC). In order to ensure comfort, the body heat must be preserved or emitted, depending on external conditions. If the body heat is not properly managed, it can cause hyperthermia, heatstroke, and thermal discomfort. Conventionally, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems are used to provide comfort. However, they require a huge amount of energy, leading to an increase in global warming, and are limited to indoor applications. In recent decades, scientists across the world have been working to provide thermal comfort through wearable innovative textiles. This review article presents recent innovative strategies for moisture and/or thermal management at the material, filament/fiber, yarn, and fabric scales. It also summarizes the passive/active textile models for comfort. Integrating electrical devices in garments can rapidly control the skin temperature, and is dynamic and useful for a wide range of environmental conditions. However, their use can be limited in some situations due to their bulky design and batteries, which must be frequently recharged. Furthermore, adaptive textiles enable the wearer to maintain comfort in various temperatures and humidity without requiring batteries. Using these wearable textiles is convenient to provide thermal comfort at the individual level rather than controlling the entire building temperature.

Wearable Sensor Clothing for Body Movement Measurement during Physical Activities in Healthcare.

This paper presents a wearable wireless system for measuring human body activities, consisting of small inertial sensor nodes and the main hub for data transmission via Bluetooth for further analysis. Unlike optical and ultrasonic technologies, the proposed solution has no movement restrictions, such as the requirement to stay in the line of sight, and it provides information on the dynamics of the human body’s poses regardless of its location. The problem of the correct placement of sensors on the body is considered, a simplified architecture of the wearable clothing is described, an experimental set-up is developed and tests are performed. The system has been tested by performing several physical exercises and comparing the performance with the commercially available BTS Bioengineering SMART DX motion capture system. The results show that our solution is more suitable for complex exercises as the system based on digital cameras tends to lose some markers. The proposed wearable sensor clothing can be used as a multi-purpose data acquisition device for application-specific data analysis, thus providing an automated tool for scientists and doctors to measure patient’s body movements.

High-performance textile piezoelectric pressure sensor with novel structural hierarchy based on ZnO nanorods array for wearable application

With the increasing demand for smart wearable clothing, the textile piezoelectric pressure sensor (T-PEPS) that can harvest mechanical energy directly has attracted significant attention. However, the current challenge of T-PEPS lies in remaining the outstanding output performance without compromising its wearing comfort. Here, a novel structural hierarchy T-PEPS based on the single-crystalline ZnO nanorods are designed. The T-PEPS is constructed with three layers mode consisting of a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane, the top and bottom layers of conductive rGO polyester (PET) fabrics with self-orientation ZnO nanorods. As a result, the as-fabricated T-PEPS shows low detection limit up to 8.71 Pa, high output voltage to 11.47 V and superior mechanical stability. The sensitivity of the sensor is 0.62 V·kPa−1 in the pressure range of 0–2.25 kPa. Meanwhile, the T-PEPS is employed to detect human movements such as bending/relaxation motion of the wrist, bending/stretching motion of each finger. It is demonstrated that the T-PEPS can be up-scaled to promote the application of wearable sensor platforms and self-powered devices.

Self-Locomotive Soft Actuator Based on Asymmetric Microstructural Ti3C2Tx MXene Film Driven by Natural Sunlight Fluctuation.

Soft actuators and microrobots that can move spontaneously and continuously without artificial energy supply and intervention have great potential in industrial, environmental, and military applications, but still remain a challenge. Here, a bioinspired MXene-based bimorph actuator with an asymmetric layered microstructure is reported, which can harness natural sunlight to achieve directional self-locomotion. We fabricate a freestanding MXene film with an increased and asymmetric layered microstructure through the graft of coupling agents into the MXene nanosheets. Owing to the excellent photothermal effect of MXene nanosheets, increased interlayer spacing favoring intercalation/deintercalation of water molecules and its caused reversible volume change, and the asymmetric microstructure, this film exhibits light-driven deformation with a macroscopic and fast response. Based on it, a soft bimorph actuator with ultrahigh response to solar energy is fabricated, showing natural sunlight-driven actuation with ultralarge amplitude and fast response (346° in 1 s). By utilizing continuous bending deformation of the bimorph actuator in response to the change of natural sunlight intensity and biomimetic design of an inchworm to rectify the repeated bending deformation, an inchwormlike soft robot is constructed, achieving directional self-locomotion without any artificial energy and control. Moreover, soft arms for lifting objects driven by natural sunlight and wearable smart ornaments that are combined with clothing and produce three-dimensional deformation under natural sunlight are also developed. These results provide a strategy for developing natural sunlight-driven soft actuators and reveal great application prospects of this photoactuator in sunlight-driven soft biomimetic robots, intelligent solar-energy-driven devices in space, and wearable clothing.

A summary of the research status and development trends of protective clothing for the elderly

In order to understand the current status of the development of elderly fall-preventive clothing, focusing on the current application of energy-absorbing cushioning materials, protective equipment and wearable clothing in the field of fall-protective clothing, this paper summarizes the main domestic and foreign research on elderly fall-protective clothing The results, specifically analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of energy-absorbing cushioning materials, protective equipment and wearable clothing in its application. It points out the precautions for the development of anti-fall clothing for the elderly, and draws the research and development trend of anti-fall clothing, and provides functional clothing for the elderly in daily life that is healthy, comfortable and self-help convenient. It is in line with the current “elderly-oriented” design The concept provides guiding suggestions for the development of anti-fall clothing for the elderly.

Development and evaluation methods of smart wearable clothing

With the development of technology and the increase in customer demand, smart clothing has become an indispensable part of the clothing field. Smart clothing is also gradually being applied to many aspects such as medical monitoring, daily protection, entertainment and sports. Based on the original wearing needs, sensors are integrated into the clothing to meet the miniaturization and convenience of electronic products. As a result, it has an impact on the comfort and aesthetics of clothing materials. During the research and development process, hardware devices such as sensors were added to the fabric, resulting in changes in the original structure and design of the clothing itself. There is no complete set of standards for smart clothing. This article starts with the development of smart clothing, classifies it, and sorts out some evaluation methods of smart clothing.

Real-Time Cloth Simulation on Virtual Human Character Using Enhanced Position Based Dynamic Framework Technique

Cloth simulation and animation has been the topic of research since the mid-80's in the field of computer graphics. Enforcing incompressible is very important in real time simulation. Although, there are great achievements in this regard, it still suffers from unnecessary time consumption in certain steps that is common in real time applications. This research develops a real-time cloth simulator for a virtual human character (VHC) with wearable clothing. This research achieves success in cloth simulation on the VHC through enhancing the position-based dynamics (PBD) framework by computing a series of positional constraints which implement constant densities. Also, the self-collision and collision with moving capsules is implemented to achieve realistic behavior cloth modelled on animated characters. This is to enable comparable incompressibility and convergence to raised cosine deformation (RCD) function solvers. On implementation, this research achieves optimized collision between clothes, syncing of the animation with the cloth simulation and setting the properties of the cloth to get the best results possible. Therefore, a real-time cloth simulation, with believable output, on animated VHC is achieved. This research perceives our proposed method can serve as a completion to the game assets clothing pipeline.

From Waste to Wealth: A Lightweight and Flexible Leather Solid Waste/Polyvinyl Alcohol/Silver Paper for Highly Efficient Electromagnetic Interference Shielding.

With the popularization of 5G communications and the internet of things, electromagnetic wave (EW) radiation pollution has aroused much concern from the public, and the search for new materials and technologies for preparing electromagnetic shielding materials still continues all around the world. However, the contradiction among high shielding performance, economic applicability, and flexibility is still not well balanced. Herein, we fabricated a novel foldable leather solid waste (LSW)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/silver (Ag) paper with excellent electromagnetic interference (EMI)-shielding ability using a facile but sustainable electroless plating (ELP) method with LSW as the resource. Taking PVA as a cross-linker, debundled leather fibers (LFs) generated by solid-state shearing milling could generate a flexible LSW/PVA substrate with a high specific surface area, and eventually the deposited Ag layer served as a protective layer not only to significantly improve the mechanical and thermal robustness, but also to endow the LSW/PVA/Ag paper with good hydrophobicity, which could protect from potential moisture damage. In addition to the reflection effect of metallic Ag on EW, the hierarchical structure of collagen fibers played an important role in superior high EMI-shielding effectiveness (∼55-∼90 dB) by an absorption-dominant EMI-shielding mechanism. Furthermore, a multilayer LSW/PVA/Ag paper was also prepared with enhanced EMI-shielding effectiveness of 111.3 dB benefited by constructing multiple reflection-absorption interfaces. The high-performance, environmentally friendly, and low-cost EMI-shielding materials not only offered a new avenue toward recycling LSW in a more value-added way, but also displayed promising potential for application in flexible shielding materials or wearable clothing.

Intelligent Textiles and its applications: An overview

Intelligent wearable clothing can be seen as textiles that possess the capability of sensing and responding to environmental changes. The clothing sense the physical activity of the person and his environment, monitor and analyze it, and accordingly attempts to respond in most appropriate manner. Intelligent textiles are laced with embedded electronics sensors and other circuitry into fabric thereby resulting in smart outfits capable of an array of diverse applications. Intelligent textiles find applications in defense sectors, railways, firefighters, police, skydivers, sports-persons and other professional activities. The aim of this study is to highlight the protective applications of wearable intelligent textiles and their significance in the present context.

LoRa-Based Smart IoT Application for Smart City: An Example of Human Posture Detection

Scientists have explored the human body for hundreds of years, and yet more relationships between the behaviors and health are still to be discovered. With the development of data mining, artificial intelligence technology, and human posture detection, it is much more possible to figure out how behaviors and movements influence people’s health and life and how to adjust the relationship between work and rest, which is needed urgently for modern people against this high-speed lifestyle. Using smart technology and daily behaviors to supervise or predict people’s health is a key part of a smart city. In a smart city, these applications involve large groups and high-frequency use, so the system must have low energy consumption, a portable system, and a low cost for long-term detection. To meet these requirements, this paper proposes a posture recognition method based on multisensor and using LoRa technology to build a long-term posture detection system. LoRa WAN technology has the advantages of low cost and long transmission distances. Combining the LoRa transmitting module and sensors, this paper designs wearable clothing to make people comfortable in any given posture. Aiming at LoRa’s low transmitting frequency and small size of data transmission, this paper proposes a multiprocessing method, including data denoising, data enlarging based on sliding windows, feature extraction, and feature selection using Random Forest, to make 4 values retain the most information about 125 data from 9 axes of sensors. The result shows an accuracy of 99.38% of extracted features and 95.06% of selected features with the training of 3239 groups of datasets. To verify the performance of the proposed algorithm, three testers created 500 groups of datasets and the results showed good performance. Hence, due to the energy sustainability of LoRa and the accuracy of recognition, this proposed posture recognition using multisensor and LoRa can work well when facing long-term detection and LoRa fits smart city well when facing long-distance transmission.

Wearable Technologies and Smart Clothes in the Fashion Business: Some Issues Concerning Cybersecurity and Data Protection

Wearable devices and smart clothes give rise to pivotal technological and legal issues in the fashion business. The cybersecurity attention in the digital society, and the advent of General Data Protection Regulation No. 2016/679 (GDPR) in the European, and global, legal framework, implied the need to evaluate which norms and aspects of the European Regulation could apply to wearable devices, which are becoming more and more invasive. Wearable devices are, first of all (and from a data protection point of view), intrusive tools that can put users’ personal (and intimate) data at risk. In particular, we will discuss the aspects of the spread of an accountability “culture” (also) in the fashion business, the need for correct management policy of data breaches, the rights of transparency for users/customers who are using wearable devices and smart clothes, and respect for the dignity and nondiscrimination of the individual during the data collection and processing. These are, all, fundamental points: the protection of the individual’s data in the digital landscape is, in fact, strictly connected to the protection of his/her fundamental rights in the modern digital society.

Silver‐plated polyamide fabrics with high electromagnetic shielding effectiveness performance prepared by in situ reduction of polydopamine and chemical silvering

ABSTRACTIn this article, the silver‐plated polyamide fabrics (SPPAFs) with high electroconductibility and shielding effectiveness were fabricated by using in situ reduction of polydopamine and chemical silvering. The effects of SPPAFs dopamine (C8H11O2N) and silver nitrate (AgNO3) concentration on surface resistivity and electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness were studied. The results showed that the surface resistivity of SPPAFs can reach a minimum value of 0.06 ± 0.014 Ω cm−1, when C8H11O2N concentration is 4 g L−1 and the AgNO3 concentration is 120 g L−1. The shielding effectiveness of SPPAFs in the wide frequency range of 10–3000 MHz increases with the increase in the concentration of AgNO3, and increases first and stabilizes afterward with increasing C8H11O2N concentration. When the concentration of C8H11O2N and AgNO3 is 3 and 120 g L−1, respectively, mean shielding effectiveness values in the low‐, medium‐, and high‐frequency bands are 71.3, 73.8, and 76.1 dB, respectively. Moreover, the mean shielding effectiveness values is 83.79 dB in the frequency range of 1.2–2.3 GHz. The dominant shielding mechanism of SPPAFs is the reflected electromagnetic waves and the absorption shielding effectiveness is less than 2 dB. The average electromagnetic shielding values of SPPAFs are above 67 dB after 16 weeks of storage, when C8H11O2N concentration is 4 g L−1 and the AgNO3 concentration is 80 and 100 g L−1. The prepared SPPAFs show promising applications in military textiles and smart wearable clothing. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 48227.