The New Type of Knitted Resistive Fabric and its Application

Present paper relates to the field of “smart textiles” and demonstrates the results of research carried out on the development of a new type of knitted sensing elements (knitted resistive fabric (KRP)) which can be integrated in the garment applied for health monitoring. KRP produced from conductive resistive, nonconductive isolating and nonconductive elastomeric yarns. Elastomeric yarn is used as the base yarn and is knitted in the whole fabric, but isolating and resistive yarns (functional yarns) are used as face yarns and knitted in specific sequence. Proposed knitted resistive fabric has high sensitivity to strain deformation and can be used as sensing element to control deformation of the human body parts, joint motion, respiration etc.