Enabling platform technology for smart fabric design and printing

Torah, R., Wei, Y. ORCID: 0000-0001-6195-8595, Grabham, N., Li, Y., De Vos, M., Todorov, T., Popov, B., Marinov, V., Stoyanov, S., Todorov, V. and Tudor, J., 2019. Enabling platform technology for smart fabric design and printing. Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, 14. ISSN 1558-9250

[img]
Preview
Text
14179_Wei.pdf - Published version

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

A hardware and software platform is presented enabling the design, and realisation via printing, of smart fabrics. The cultural and creative industries are an important economic area within which designers frequently utilise fabrics. Smart fabrics offer further creative opportunities to the cultural and creative industries, but designers often lack the required specialist knowledge, in electronics, software and materials, to produce smart fabrics. The software platform offers the ability to perform design, layout and visualisation of a smart fabric using a library of standard smart fabric functions (e.g. electroluminescence) so specialist expertise is not needed. Operation of the smart fabric can be simulated, and parameters can be set for smart fabric control electronics, which consists of standard circuit board modules. The software also provides driver code for the hardware platform to print the smart fabric. The hardware platform consists of a bespoke dispenser printer; functional inks are deposited via a pneumatic syringe controlled by the driver software, allowing bespoke rapid prototyped smart fabrics to be printed. Operation of the software and hardware system is demonstrated by the realisation of an interactive smart fabric consisting of electroluminescent lamps controlled by a proximity sensor. The modular electronics are used to control the smart fabric operation using embedded code generated by the software platform. For example, the blink rate of the electroluminescent lamp can be adjusted by the proximity of a hand. This control is achieved by the use of intuitive drop-down menus and input/output selections by the creative user. At present, the platform allows the design, print and implementation of smart fabrics incorporating the functions of colour change, electroluminescence, sound emission and proximity sensing. The platform can be expanded to add additional functions in the future and the printer will be compatible with new inks developed for screen and inkjet printing.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics
Creators: Torah, R., Wei, Y., Grabham, N., Li, Y., De Vos, M., Todorov, T., Popov, B., Marinov, V., Stoyanov, S., Todorov, V. and Tudor, J.
Publisher: Sage
Date: 1 May 2019
Volume: 14
ISSN: 1558-9250
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1177/1558925019845903DOI
Rights: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Divisions: Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by: Linda Sullivan
Date Added: 01 Jul 2019 15:27
Last Modified: 01 Jul 2019 15:27
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/36991

Actions (login required)

Edit View Edit View

Views

Views per month over past year

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year