Sensorized Woven Tapes and Their Testing

Sensorizing of woven tapes is the starting point for many innovations when physical properties like force, pressure, temperature, shape change, or moisture have to be supervised in medical textiles, wellness requisites, load bearing belts, buildings, and sporting goods. In order to produce textile-based sensors, fibers or bundles of fibers, ribbons and other textile substrates are furnished with coatings which can advantageously be tailored to any desired sensing capability. Hereby, the textile material remains nearly unchanged and keeps up its textile typical behavior. The sensorized area is free from nontextile components. The presented chapter deals with textile sensors for the measurement of contact pressure, temperature, and moisture. For this reason, sensorized threads are interwoven into tapes and connected with wires for the transmission of signals. Further on, woven tapes with sensing coatings and their applications are presented. A second part of this chapter is dedicated to questions regarding the accessibility to evaluation units, the minimization of cross-sensitivities and environmental influences as well as the reproducibility of sensor characteristics. Finally, a testing method for smart textiles is introduced based on simultaneously applying mechanical stress and monitoring the change in electrical resistance.