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Electrically conductive fibers are required for numerous fields of application in modern textile technology. They are of particular importance in the manufacturing of smart textiles and fiber composite systems with textile-based sensor and actuator systems. Elastic and electrically conductive filaments can be used as strain sensors for monitoring the mechanical loading of critical components. In order to produce such sensorial filaments, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) is compounded with carbon nanotubes (CNT) and melt spun. The mechanical performances of filaments produced at different spinning speeds and containing different amounts of CNT were tested. Furthermore, the correlation between the specific electrical resistance of the filaments and the mechanical strain were analyzed depending on the CNT-content and the spinning speed.

The internet of things is a key driver for new developments in the fields of medicine, industry 4.0 and gaming. Consequently, the interaction of virtual and real world by smart interconnecting of devices in our everyday life is the basis idea of the Cluster of Excellence "Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop" (CeTI) at TU Dresden. To enable a user-centric approach in CeTI innovative textile structures, mainly knitted smart gloves, and their functionalization by integration of sensors and sensory yarns are focus of research activities.

The Cluster of Excellence “Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI)” deals with developments and inventions concerning smart devices used in many fields, e.g. industry 4.0, medicine and skill learning. These kind of applications require smart devices, sensors, actors and conductive structures. Textile structures address these applications by meeting requirements such of being flexible, adaptable and wearable. Within this paper, the development of a protective coating for electrically conductive (EC) yarns is captured. These EC yarns are nowadays often used for smart textile applications. One challenge in their application is the integration into textile structures. Often, the handling and use of EC yarns lead on the one hand to damages on the surface of the yarn and on the other hand to reduced electromechanically characteristics. This paper aims to characterize these EC yarns in regard to develop a suitable protective coating based on polypropylene (PP). To achieve this development, an extensive characterization of the EC yarns as well as the protective coating itself is important. The surface free energy (SFE), the topographical and the chemical characteristics are necessary for developing a suitable protective coating. However, the yarns are characterized before and after implementation into the textile structure and furthermore after the coating respectively with the developed finish.

Adaptive fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) contain actuators that enable the controlled modification of system states and characteristics. The textile-technical integration of actuators, in particular shape memory alloys, into reinforcing fabrics has increasingly been applied in recent years. The objective is to achieve optimum force transmission from shape memory alloy to FRP, long-term stability of adaptive FRP as well as a maximum degree of deformation. This paper presents the development of actuator networks for adaptive FRP, where two shape memory alloys are integrated into reinforcing fabrics by means of open reed weaving technology. After infusion of the functionalized reinforcing fabrics, the deformation behavior of adaptive FRP was characterized with variable actuator switching frequencies (≥ 1 Hz) or actuator activation times (≤ 1 s).