Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 3618: Analysis of Sensitivity, Linearity, Hysteresis, Responsiveness, and Fatigue of Textile Knit Stretch Sensors

Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 3618: Analysis of Sensitivity, Linearity, Hysteresis, Responsiveness, and Fatigue of Textile Knit Stretch Sensors
Sensors doi: 10.3390/s19163618
Authors:
An Liang
Rebecca Stewart
Nick Bryan-Kinns

Wearable technology is widely used for collecting information about the human body and its movement by placing sensors on the body. This paper presents research into electronic textile strain sensors designed specifically for wearable applications which need to be lightweight, robust, and comfortable. In this paper, sixteen stretch sensors, each with different conductive stretch fabrics, are evaluated: EeonTex (Eeonyx Corporation), knitted silver-plated yarn, and knitted spun stainless steel yarn. The sensors’ performance is tested using a tensile tester while monitoring their resistance with a microcontroller. Each sensor was analyzed for its sensitivity, linearity, hysteresis, responsiveness, and fatigue through a series of dynamic and static tests. The findings show that for wearable applications a subset of the silver-plated yarn sensors had better ranked performance in terms of sensitivity, linearity, and steady state. EeonTex was found to be the most responsive, and the stainless steel yarn performed the worst, which may be due to the characteristics of the knit samples under test.

Source: Sensors - August 19, 2019 Category: Biotechnology Authors: An Liang Rebecca Stewart Nick Bryan-Kinns Tags: Article Source Type: research