School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University, Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jan 7;21(2):358. doi: 10.3390/s21020358.
Weft knitted conductive fabrics can act as excellent textile strain sensors for human motion capture. The loop architecture dictates the overall electrical properties of weft knit strain sensors. Therefore, research into loop architecture is relevant for comprehensively investigating the design space of e-textile sensors. There are three main types of knit stitches, Knitted loop stitch, Miss stitch, and Tuck stitch. Nevertheless, most of the research into weft knit strain sensors has largely focused on fabrics with only knitted loop stitches. Miss and tuck stitches will affect the contact points in the sensor and, consequently, its piezoresistivity. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of incorporating miss and tuck stitches on the piezoresistivity of a weft knit sensor. Particularly, the electromechanical models of a miss stitch and a tuck stitch in a weft knit sensor are proposed. These models were used in order to develop loop configurations of sensors that consist of various percentages of miss or tuck stitches. Subsequently, the developed loop configurations were simulated while using LTspice and MATLAB software; and, verified experimentally through a tensile test. The experimental results closely agree with the simulated results. Furthermore, the results reveal that increases in the percentage of tuck or miss stitches in weft knit sensor decrease the initial and average resistance of the sensor. In addition, it was observed that, although the piezoresistivity of a sensor with tuck or miss stitches is best characterised as a quadratic polynomial, increases in the percentage of tuck stitches in the sensor increase the linearity of the sensor's piezoresistivity.
经编导电织物可用作人体运动捕捉的优秀纺织应变传感器。线圈结构决定了经编应变传感器的整体电学性能。因此，对线圈结构的研究对于全面研究电子纺织品传感器的设计空间具有重要意义。针织线圈结构主要有三种类型：针织线圈结构、缺压结构和集圈结构。然而，大多数经编应变传感器的研究主要集中在只有针织线圈结构的织物上。缺压结构和集圈结构会影响传感器中的接触点，从而影响其压阻性能。因此，本文研究了在经编传感器中加入缺压结构和集圈结构对压阻性能的影响。特别是，提出了经编传感器中缺压结构和集圈结构的机电模型。这些模型用于开发由不同百分比的缺压结构或集圈结构组成的传感器的线圈结构。随后，使用 LTspice 和 MATLAB 软件对开发的线圈结构进行了模拟，并通过拉伸试验进行了实验验证。实验结果与模拟结果非常吻合。此外，结果表明，经编传感器中缺压结构或集圈结构的百分比增加会降低传感器的初始电阻和平均电阻。此外，虽然带缺压结构或集圈结构的传感器的压阻性能最好用二次多项式来描述，但传感器中集圈结构百分比的增加会提高传感器压阻性能的线性度。
