George K. Stylios

An overview of smart technologies for clothing design and engineering

Purpose – The paper aims to provide an overview of the area of smart textiles.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes and discusses new and developing materials and technologies used in the textile industries.Findings – Significant progress has been achieved in the area of technical textiles. Fibres, yarns, fabrics and other structures with added‐value functionality have been successfully developed for technical and/or high performance end‐uses. The basic building blocks are already in place in the field of smart textiles and clothing.Practical implications – As progress in science and engineering research advances, and as the gap between designers and scientists narrows, the area of smart clothing is likely to keep on expanding for the foreseeable future. Growth is predicted to occur in two distinct directions: performance‐driven smart clothing and fashion‐driven smart clothing. There are challenges that have to be addressed.Originality/value – The paper provides information of value to those i...

Effect of low temperature plasma treatment on the scouring and dyeing of natural fabrics

The contact angles, wicking properties, scourability, and dyeability of wool and cotton fabrics are affected by low-temperature plasma treatments. After treatment, wool and cotton fabric specimens show increased hydrophilicity and improved scouring and dyeing processing by nearly 50%.

Investigating the Plasma Modification of Natural Fiber Fabrics-The Effect on Fabric Surface and Mechanical Properties

Following previous work [Textile Research Journal, 74,751-756 (2004)], the mechanical and surface properties and handle of wool and cotton fabrics were measured using the KES-FB system after different stages of treatment. This investigation shows that the mechanical properties of wool and cotton changed remarkably after oxygen plasma treatment. There were no significantly observed differences between plasma treated and untreated fabrics after wet scouring and dyeing.

New measurement technologies for textiles and clothing

Purpose – To establish new measurement technologies in textiles and clothing.Design/methodology/approach – Three areas are covered, diverse in methodology and approach: measurement of fabric mechanics, measurement of seam quality, and measurement of human size and shape.Findings – Three new measurement technologies have been established.Research limitations/implications – The mechanics are limited to the measurement of lightweight fabrics. The human measurement needs clear photographs.Practical implications – All techniques can make measurement more accurate and efficient in all three areas.Originality/value – All techniques are original and have a major contribution to textile and clothing science and technology.

Shape memory training for smart fabrics

Recent advances in shape memory alloys (SMAs) and shape memory polymers (SMPs) have inspired researchers to create intelligent textiles as self-regulating shape-changing structures responding to environmental variation, contributing to a new field in the scientific frontier of smart materials. This paper shows how appropriate shape memory training can engineer fabric designs to enhance their performance and their aesthetic appeal. Main technologies include the training procedure of shape memory effect (SME) in SMAs and SMPs, the regulation of phase transformation temperatures in SMAs, the manufacture of SMP yarns and SMP coating on fabrics for specific requirements of fabric design. Further attention is also paid to the combination of SMPs or SMAs with textile design of different fabric yarn for promoting specific dynamic aesthetic effects.

An intelligent summarization system based on cognitive psychology

Automatic document summarization is a highly interdisciplinary research area related with computer science, multimedia, statistics, as well as cognitive psychology. In this paper, we introduce an intelligent system, the event indexing and summarization (EIS) system, for automatic document summarization, which is based on a cognitive psychology model (the event-indexing model) and the roles and importance of sentences and their syntax in document understanding. The EIS system involves syntactic analysis of sentences, clustering and indexing sentences with five indices from the event-indexing model and extracting the most prominent content by lexical analysis at phrase and clause levels. After thorough implementation and objective evaluations, the system has shown good performance in multiple documents summarization. This system also incorporates special algorithms related with the third person pronoun resolution to extract the true entities that each sentence describes.

A remote, on‐line 3‐D human measurement and reconstruction approach for virtual wearer trials in global retailing

A powerful 3‐D system has been developed for on‐line 3‐D human measurement and reconstruction that interferes with a SQL Server database for virtual wearer trials in global retailing. In this research, 3‐D body profiles have been captured and analysed using an on‐line image measurement and processing system developed in this research and then stored in the database system. A parametric geometric human model has been devised with an effective search algorithm that utilises body measurements obtained on‐line or retrieved from the database. A SQL server database system has been constructed with user friendly interfaces which enables users to collect, manage and analyse all related information including human body images.

Engineering the drapability of textile fabrics

The drape attributes of fabrics, number of folds, depth of folds and evenness of folds were measured together with the drape coefficient. The relationship between these measurements and the subjective evaluation of the fabric drape was modelled for each end‐use on a neural network using back propagation, which can correctly predict the grades of 90 per cent of the samples. The relationship between the drape attributes and fabric bending, shear and weight was also modelled using neural networks. It was found that using the natural logarithm of the material property divided first by the weight of the fabric produced the most predictive model. Together, these models provide a powerful predictive tool to determine both the drape attributes and the drape grade from the mechanical properties of a fabric. The accuracy of the prediction of this system was found to be 83 per cent overall. Combining this with a novel feedback system, the drape grade or drape attributes of a fabric can be modified to fit the customer requirements and then the changes to the material properties required to achieve them can be determined.

Analysis of the effect of experimental parameters on the morphology of electrospun polyethylene oxide nanofibres and on their thermal properties

Electrospinning is a new and simple method of producing nanofibres by introducing electric field into polymer solutions. We perform an experimental investigation on the influence of processing parameters and solution properties on the structural morphology and average fibre diameter of electrospun polyethylene oxide (PEO) polymer solution and on their thermal properties. Experimental trials have been conducted to investigate the effect of solution parameters, such as concentration, addition of ethanol in PEO solution, solvent effect, as well as governing parameters, such as applied voltage, collection distance and flow rate. At higher concentrations, the nanofibres with regular morphology and, on average, uniform fibre diameter were obtained, and at lower concentrations of PEO polymer solution, the fibres showed irregular morphology with large variations in fibre diameter. We also found that the addition of ethanol increased the fibre diameter and produced bead‐free fibres. Applied voltage, collection distance and flow rate also influence fibre morphology. To analyse the thermal properties of the fibres produced from the PEO powder and the electrospun nanofibres produced from the two polymer solutions (PEO + water and PEO + water/ethanol), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used, and to determine the degree of crystallinity, X‐ray diffraction technique has been used.

Designing knitted apparel by engineering the attributes of shape memory alloy

This paper discusses how shape memory alloy can be engineered to provide new design concepts that enhance the aesthetic appeal of knitted textiles for apparel. It focuses on the range of techniques and processes used to accommodate the specific characteristics and requirements of the shape memory alloy and it describes a new approach to the overall design construct.