Electronics in Textiles and Clothing: Design, Products and Applications

Electronics in Textiles and Clothing: Design, Products and Applications covers the fundamentals of electronics and their applications in textiles and clothing product development. The book emphasizes the interface between electronics and textile materials, detailing diverse methods and techniques used in industrial practice. It explores ways to integrate textile materials with electronics for communicating/signal transferring applications. It also discusses wearable electronic products for industrial applications based on functional properties and end users in sectors such as defense, medicine, health monitoring, and security.

The book details the application of wearable electronics and outlines the textile fibres used for wearable electronics. It includes coverage of different yarn types and fabric production techniques and modifications needed on conventional machines for developing fabrics using specialty yarns. The coverage includes problems faced during the production processes and their solutions. Novel sensors, specialty yarns, Body Sensor Networks (BSN), and the development of flexible solar tents used for power generation round out the coverage. The book then concludes with discussions of the development of fabric-integrated wearable electronic products for use in mobihealth care systems, smart cloth for ambulatory remote monitoring, electronic jerkin, heating gloves, and pneumatic gloves.

Based mainly on the authors’ projects and field work, the book takes a practical approach to the issues involved in designing electronic circuits and their possibilities for signals, giving you an understanding of problems that can occur when executing the work. It also describes the future scope of e-textiles using conductive materials for medical, healthcare textile product development, and safety aspects. The text provides guidelines for the development of wearable textiles, giving a new meaning to the term human-machine symbiosis in the context of pervasive/invisible computing.

Dr L Ashok Kumar Professor, in Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India and he has completed his graduate programme in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He did his post graduation in Electrical Machines as his major. He also completed his MBA with Specialization HRD. He has completed his PhD in Wearable Electronics. He has been a teaching faculty at PSG College of Technology, India since 2000. After the completion UG Degree he joined as Project Engineer in Serval Paper Boards Ltd., Coimbatore (now renamed as ITC unit, Kovai). He has been actively involved in numerous Government Sponsored Research Projects funded by DRDO, DSIR, CSIR, DST, L-RAMP, Villgro and AICTE. He has published many Technical papers in reputed National, International Journals and Conferences. He has visited many countries for presenting his research work and industry consultancy activities. He has been selected as the Visiting Professor in University of Arkansas, USA. He got trained in Germany for installing Grid connected and stands alone Solar PV systems. He is a registered Charted Engineer from IE (India). Dr L Ashok Kumar is a recipient of many National Awards from IE, ISTE, STA, NFED, etc. He is a member of various National and International Technical bodies like IE, ISTE, IETE, TSI, BMSI, ISSS, SESI, SSI, CSI & TAI. The author has received several awards namely, Young Engineer Award& Dr Triguna Charan Sen Prize, P.K.Das Memorial Best Faculty Award, Prof. K Arumugam National Award, Best Researcher Award and Outstanding Educator and Best Researcher Award. His research areas include, Wearable Electronics, Solar PV & Wind Energy Systems, Textile Control Engineering, Smart Grid, Smart Grid and Power Electronics & Drives.

Dr C Vigneswaran is working as Associate Professor in Department of Fashion Technology, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India since 2004. He has completed his M.Tech (Textile Technology) from PSG College of Technology in the area of Wearable Electronic field and PhD in Textile Technology from Anna University, Chennai, India in the area of Bioprocessing of Organic cotton textiles. He has received State First in Diploma in Man Made Fibre Technology during 1992-95; Best Student Award, awarded by Lee Educational Trust, U.K, during 79th World Textile Conference organized by The Textile Institute, U.K. in the year 1998; ‘PRECITEX AWARD’ Best student in spinning by Precitex Rubber Industries, Mumbai during the year 1998-99; Dr Triguna Charan Sen Prize Award awarded by The Institution of Engineers (India), Kolkata for the Best Technical Research Paper in Textile Discipline for the year 2008-09 during the 23rd Indian Engineering Congress, Warangal on 12 the December 2008; "Bharat Shiksha Ratan Award" Awarded by The Global Society for Health and Educational Trust, New Delhi for his excellence in the Academic field in Textiles on July 2010; and recently he received Young Engineer Award by The Institution of Engineers (India) in the Textile Engineering Discipline in the year 2012-13. He so far published 24 technical papers in National and International journals and 8 technical papers have been presented in the National and International level Technical Conferences. His areas of specialization are Fiber Science, Yarn Manufacturing, Garment Manufacturing Technology, Apparel Machinery and equipments and Apparel Costing. He is having a perfect blend of industrial and teaching experience over 12 years.