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Refinement of temperature sensing yarns
* 1 , * 1 , 1 , 2
1  Advanced Textiles Research Group, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University
2  School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University

Abstract:

Body temperature is an important parameter to measure in a number of fields such as medicine and sport. In medicine temperature changes can indicate underlying pathologies such as wound infections, while in sport temperature can be associated to a change in performance. In both cases a wearable temperature monitoring solution is preferable. In earlier work a temperature sensing yarn has been developed and characterised. The yarns were constructed by embedding an off-the-shelf thermistor into a polymer resin micro-pod and then into the fibres of a yarn. This process created a temperature sensing yarn that was conformal, drapeable, mechanically resilient, and washable. This work builds on this early study with the purposes of identifying the steady state error bought about on the temperature measurements as a result of the polymer resin and yarn fibres. Here a wider range of temperatures than previously explored were investigated. Additionally two types of polymer resin with different thermal properties have been tested, with varying thicknesses, for the encapsulation of the thermistor. This provides useful additional information for optimising the temperature sensing yarn design.

Keywords: electronic textiles; wearable electronics; smart textiles; temperature-sensing; diabetic ulcers; thermistor; wound management; sensor network
Comments on this paper
Jandro Abot
Jandro Abot
Dear Authors,

Nice work. How would you account for temperature variability throughout the length of the yarn? Did you consider using a carbon-based fiber instead? Do you plan to consider the coupled effect of strain and temperature? Thank you so much in advance.


Sincerely.

Jandro L. Abot
Theodore Hughes-Riley
Dear Jandro Abot,

Thank you for your comment. For the applications of interest to us, we required spatially resolved temperature measurement, so only cared about the temperature where a thermistor was present. Temperature variations in the rest of the yarn do not appear to alter the sensors response given the relatively low resistance of the copper interconnects. The possible use of carbon fibre is an interesting comment; however, I would be slightly concerned that it may impinge on the textile properties of the yarn. We have not considered combining strain and temperature for this application but that may be worth considering in future work.


I would be happy to discuss this with you further.

Kind regards,

Theo
Jandro Abot
Thank you so much for your comment Theo.



 
 
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