Shahood Uz Zaman

Compression garments have been widely used in both medical and sports applications, which offer therapeutic effects by applying strain on specific areas of the body. Traditional strain sensors were rigid, having limited flexibility and integration. Currently, multiple strain sensors are being made, but most of them fail to maintain conductivity under stretch. This research aims to fill this gap by exploring the textile-based strain sensors that have greater durability and flexibility. Sensors were made using silver-based conductive ink, applied at three distinct coating levels, incorporating three different design geometries, and fabricated on two types of textile substrates. Results indicated that Design 2, when using Substrate A and the level three coating, exhibited better stability and durability, along with optimal and consistent results. Design 3 exhibited greater sensitivity to mechanical deformation, indicating its potential for detecting small body movements. Design 2 with Level 3 coating was subsequently integrated into a compression garment to evaluate its electrical response during controlled body movements. The developed textile-based strain sensor highlights strong future potential for integration into therapeutic pressure garments for reliable movement monitoring based on further validations in the future.

Diabetes management depends on regular glucose monitoring, yet conventional blood-based methods are invasive and can reduce user comfort. This review presents an overview of wearable glucose monitoring technologies, with emphasis on non-invasive approaches. It first distinguishes invasive, minimally invasive, and non-invasive monitoring and discusses the use of interstitial fluid, sweat, saliva, tears, urine, and breath as alternative sensing media. The review then summarizes optical, electrochemical, electrical/electromagnetic, and nanotechnology-enabled sensing methods, together with representative wearable and commercially reported devices. At the end, textile-based systems are compared with non-textile platforms in terms of comfort, flexibility, signal reliability, durability, and practical integration. Across these approaches, major limitations include variable relationships between alternative biofluids and blood glucose, interference from physiological and environmental factors, calibration requirements, motion artifacts, limited durability, and insufficient clinical validation. Future development requires more reliable sensing, improved wearable integration, standardized testing, and validation under real-world conditions.

Traditional ready-to-wear garments can mostly not conform to different body shapes because of the adoption of the generic sizing system, which leads to the local strain of concentration and morphological misfit. Auxetic structures, which have a negative Poisson’s ratio, permit enhanced redistribution of stress and geometry and allow deformation. Two auxetic knitted structures were developed by using 100% polyester and 100% nylon yarns with a fabric density of 41 Wales and 40 courses per inch. Characterization of the initial fabrics involved checking the behavior of negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) where the polyester line (P1) structure shows the highest auxeticity, with a NPR of approximately −0.4 and peak strain reductions of 80–90%, as well as air permeability, moisture management, bend test, compression, roughness, friction properties and stiffness tests to check the mechanical and comfort-related performances. The standardized tunic garment was modeled in CLO 3D on three female body shapes—hourglass, pear and rectangle—with a constant size of 34. The fit map showed a strain of 91.49% in auxetic and 509.75% in single-jersey fabric at the hip area of the pear body shape when measuring fabric and body interaction. The findings indicate lower peak strain levels, which ascertain that increased adaptability is possible and support its use in the development of adaptive ready-to-wear garments.

Contribution au développement des textiles intelligents fiables et lavables : standards et caractérisation: Nous vivons une époque où la modernisation et la numérisation se développent rapidement. Les entreprises attirent leurs clients grâce à des techniques nouvelles et des gammes de produits personnalisés. Cette concurrence a favorisé le développement de secteurs nouveaux et hybrides pour améliorer la satisfaction des clients. Au cours des dernières décennies, de nouveaux produits, impossibles à imaginer dans le passé, ont emargé. En même temps, l'utilisation des vêtements a suivi l'évolution de l’humanité, depuis son apparition. Le concept de vêtement a débuté par le remplacement des feuilles utilisées pour couvrir certaines parties du corps. Aujourd'hui, ces vêtements sont beaucoup mieux adaptés à l'utilisateur et sont utilisés dans divers domaines, tels que la médecine, le sport, l'armée et différents projets liés à la défense. Ces nouveaux vêtements, avec des fonctions additionnelles, ont complètement changé la façon d'utiliser et de développer des textiles et c'est la raison pour laquelle le textile n'est plus une industrie indépendante, mais un mélange de différentes industries travaillant ensemble sous réserve des fonctionnalités intégrées définies par l'utilisateur. Les textiles polyvalents et à fonctionnalités améliorées peuvent contenir un ou plusieurs composants intelligents, textiles ou non textiles, tissés, brodés, cousus, intégrés ou attachés à l'aide de différentes techniques disponibles. En fonction des besoins, ces composants sont des capteurs, des actionneurs et des antennes, des unités de traitement, des dispositifs de collecte d'énergie et de transmission de puissance. Ces textiles portables avancés sont appelés textiles intelligents, électronique portable, e-textiles, vêtements intelligents, textroniques, etc.Pour progresser dans cette nouvelle partie immergée de l'industrie textile, il est important de comprendre les exigences et les problèmes liés à cette approche hybride. Les textiles intelligents sont constitués de composants provenant principalement des industries textile et électronique. Ces deux industries sont bien développées et disposent déjà de normes et de standards liés à chaque problème. Cependant, ces normes ne peuvent pas être appliquées aux systèmes e-textiles tels quels et une modification, ou le développement de nouvelles normes, est nécessaire pour rendre ces e-textiles fiables et acceptables pour les clients.Cette thèse de doctorat est consacrée à l’étude et à la mise en évidence des difficultés auxquelles le marché des textiles électroniques est confronté en termes de fiabilité et de lavabilité. Les différentes options de lavage disponibles sont analysées avec la mise en évidence des différences entre elles, afin de mieux comprendre comment sélectionner l'option de lavage la plus appropriée pour les systèmes e-textiles. Un accéléromètre a également été utilisé pour des analyses de contraintes dans le tambour de machine à laver pour de mettre en évidence les protocoles de tests mécaniques standardisés disponibles qui peuvent être utilisés comme simulation de dommages équivalents, sans le processus de lavage. Différents composants des e-textiles, y compris les composants détachables et les composants fixes, sont étudiés séparément pour déterminer les contraintes de lavage sur chacun de ces composants en termes de fonctionnalité. Enfin, un modèle de simulation a été proposé pouvant être utilisé pour identifier les dommages causés par le lavage et les prévisions de fiabilité, sans avoir à laver les systèmes e-textiles. Les protocoles standards requis pour leur adaptabilité chez les clients sont discutés et la modification des normes actuelles ainsi que les modifications nécessaires sont présentés dans cette étude.

Selection of the right size and comfortable bra is very important as the wrong bra selection may lead to many problems like skin irritation, pain, and in extreme cases can induce breast cancer. This study consists of two phases, in the first phase a survey was conducted to investigate factors affecting wrong bra selection leading to health problems, in the second phase a mobile application “Bra Guide” was developed to create awareness in women related to health issues, extraction of breast measurement, and bra sizing system. The collected data was analyzed with factor analysis using SPSS, IBM AMOS 26.0, and the mobile application was developed by using the Flutter framework. Results showed that 84% of women don’t have awareness related to bra sizing system and they also fall behind with bra style feature knowledge. The second most important factor is the nonexistence of bra fitting services which causes most women to use ill-fitted bras for their complete life, furthermore, 79% of women wear bras 24 h a day which causes health issues. A mobile application “Bra Guide” has been developed which helped in delivering awareness and solutions regarding bra size, style, and breast health issues as 91.2% of respondents rated this application as highly satisfied.

Women sports wearer’s comfort and health are greatly impacted by the breast movements and resultant sports bra compression to prevent excessive movement. However, as sports bras are only made in universal sizes, they do not offer the right kind of support that is required for a certain activity. To prevent this issue, textile-based strain sensors may be utilized to track compression throughout various activities to create activity-specific designed sports bras. Textile-based strain sensors are prepared in this study using various conductive yarns, including steel, Ag-coated polyamide, and polypropylene/steel-blended threads. Various embroidery designs, including straight, zigzag, and square-wave embroidery patterns, etc., were created on knitted fabric and characterized for strain sensing efficiencies. The experiments concluded that strain sensors prepared from polypropylene/steel thread using a 2-thread square-wave design were best performed in terms of linear conductivity, sensitivity of mechanical impact, and wide working range. This best-performed sample was also tested by integrating it into the sportswear for proposed compression measurements in different body movements.

Woven fabrics are being used in different forms, ranging from wearable clothing to household activities. Comfort and wearer ease are directly related to the stretch properties, and stretch will be beneficial with recovery performance at a given stress. This study is planned to work on the mechanical and stretch and recovery properties of combined and combination twill woven fabrics. The fabric samples were produced by using 59 tex (10/1 Ne) hemp yarn in both warp and weft directions, and thread density was kept constant in six woven fabric samples. Three different weaves, that is, combination twill weave (2/1 + 1/2 and 3/1 + 2/1), combined twill weave (2/1 + 1/2 and 3/1 + 2/1), and basic twill weaves (2/1 and 3/1) were selected for woven fabric preparation. Dimensional stability and shrinkage, tensile strength, puncture resistance, and stretch and recovery properties of developed woven samples were investigated. It was concluded that the stretch and recovery properties depend on the float and interlacement of yarns in the woven fabric. The combination twill weave structures have excellent stretch and recovery properties because they have the highest float in all samples. Combined twill weave structures have the highest tensile strength and puncture resistance properties. On the other hand, the highest shrinkage values are observed for basic twill weave structures.