Ventura, Calif.-based Patagonia and Switzerland-based HeiQ have announced a partnership to develop a sustainable finishing technology that will impart high-performance breathable and durable water repellence (DWR). In recent years, concerns about perfluorinated chemistries have driven suppliers to research alternatives.
“Shattering the status quo for DWR is of paramount importance to Patagonia,” said Matt Dwyer, director of material innovation and development at Patagonia. “However, we will not be successful unless we also achieve the quality and performance that our customers demand, a calculated partnership is a key means of doing so.”
“At HeiQ, we carefully choose our brand partners before initiating a cooperative research project to ensure that the joint effort is going to create the highest value possible for both parties, and more importantly, for consumers,” said Colin Lantz, vice president of HeiQ Brandforce. “Patagonia and HeiQ share the same vision that technology can perfect our every-day textile products. This formed the basis for this partnership.”
Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc. has acquired the American Apparel® brand as well as certain assets from American Apparel LLC. During a court supervised auction, Gildan was the successful party.
American & Efird (A&E), Mount Holly, N.C., has introduced Anefil™ Reflector, a reflective, industrial sewing thread designed for coverstitch and overedge applications. The thread is suitable for activewear, workwear, safety apparel, swimwear, denim, and footwear, among other products.
“Offered in a Tex 120 size, Anefil Reflector adds another layer of functionality in sewing that has traditionally been dominated by reflective tape,” said Mark Hatton, vice president Americas. “This produce is a versatile, decorative sewing thread and a valuable addition to the reflective market.”
A team of companies led by Swiss/Norwegian start-up company Osmotex, have introduced HYDRO_BOT moisture management technology. Osmotex collaborated with Switzerland-based Schoeller Textil AG — production partner for Hydro_Bot panels; KJUS, Switzerland — primary product development partner that will be the first brand to take the product to market in 2018-19; the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology — partner in the final development to assess durability, washability and performance of the product under a variety of conditions; and technology partner Belginova — provider of operating systems and switches for applying Hydro_Bot, and also will market Hydro_Bot products under its own 30SEVEN brand.
“Hydro_Bot is the result of 10 years of intense research and development in Switzerland,” said Trond Heldal, director of R&D and Operations, Osmotex. “Over the past two years, the development has reached a new level with four strategic partners involved in the development effort. We are confident that Hydro_Bot will represent a generational advancement in moisture management.”
Figure 1: A knitted garment featuring flexible printed interconnects and printed electrodes
Technologies for effective and durable wearable electronics are advancing and show promise.
By Amanda Myers, Allison Bowles, Hasan Shahariar, Raj Bhakta and Jesse S. Jur
What if a shirt could sense the wearer’s vitals? What if the curtains in a home could sense lethal gas concentrations? These use-cases may seem futuristic, but they are some of the technologies under development right now in the field of textile electronics at North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, N.C. Adding this sort of electronic functionality to textiles adds value to the textile. The field of textile electronics has numerous applications within sensors, home textiles, internet-of-things and wearable textiles spaces. However, given that the textile industry operates on low-cost and high-scalability, technologies that allow integration of electronic functionality onto textiles must satisfy those two requirements. Researchers at the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center on Advanced Self-powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) and the Nano Extended Textiles (NEXT) research lab at NCSU’s College of Textiles seek to solve these problems.
Blending Electronics With Textiles
Integrating electronics and textiles together seamlessly requires two manufacturing procedures to be blended. Currently, electronics and textiles are manufactured via two very different and well-established production methods neither of which is suited for modifications from a different industry. A custom manufacturing strategy separate from traditional electronic and textile production methods is required for electronic, or smart garments, to be fabricated efficiently and cost effectively.
Cut-and-sew is the cheapest and most commonly used method of apparel manufacturing. It is labor intensive, but is the easiest way to scale-up production to manufacture large quantities of garments. Costs for this type of production can be reduced by sourcing lower-cost labor and cheaper raw materials, as well as by reducing the amount of sewing per garment. Each additional operation added to the production of the garment has a large impact on the cost of production. For example, a shirt with an embroidered design costs more to make than a plain shirt because embroidery is an extra step in the production process.
There are emerging technologies that have the potential to streamline the garment production process so that it would be easier to integrate e-textiles in a customizable way. For example, fully fashioned knitting technologies — such as WholeGarment™ from Japan-based Shima Seiki Mfg. Ltd. and knit and wear® from Germany-based H. Stoll AG & Co. KG — permit a complete garment to be knit in a single process on one machine so no additional finishing is required. This significantly cuts down on processing time, waste, as well as hands-on personnel time. Conductive yarns also can be knit into the garment in precise locations using the same process instead of being appliqued in an additional step, which adds to the cost of production. This process also reduces the amount of expensive yarn waste by using only the conductive yarn in the areas where it is required, such as in locations for sensors in interconnects. The possibilities for creating complex patterns or circuits during the design and programming stage of production using specific knit structuring are endless.
Figure 2: A textile featuring direct-write printed conductive ink illustrates the multi-layered textile, conductive ink and thermoplastic polyurethane layer
Conductive Yarns
Conductive yarns are a logical pathway to creating textile circuitry using these fully fashioned knitting processes. Biocompatible yarns featuring stainless-steel or silver can be used as the conductive components. Silver is the more conductive of the two materials, but stainless steel yields a cheaper yarn. Currently, the textile industry is trying to use the same spinning and knitting machinery that has been used for decades to make conductive yarns and fabrics, which limits the scalability of e-textiles. Yarns containing stainless-steel or silver can be difficult to run on traditional machinery because of friction and the abrasion of metal yarn on metal. Unlike typical textile materials like cotton or polyester, conductive materials are more rigid with less extensibility, which makes them difficult to bend and twist during textile processing. Machines must be run much slower than during traditional textile production processes in order to prevent yarn or fabric defects as well as machine damage. Efforts have been made to improve conductive yarn processing by blending conductive materials with non-conductive fibers; however, this generally leads to higher electrical resistance in the finished yarn. To create a functional circuit, the interconnects between electronic components need extremely low resistance — or high conductivity. Therefore, most conductive yarns currently available are not suitable for textile circuitry because of either high electrical resistance or difficulty during knitting and/or weaving.
Some manipulation of the final conductivity of a textile can be performed at the knit level by changing the stitch length or knit structure. A more dense knit structure will show a higher electrical conductivity because of increased interaction between the conductive yarns. However, the benefits gained from increased density are not enough to enable textile circuits. Instead, current conductive yarn technology is most suitable for electronic sensors or actuators that do not have the stringent conductivity requirements that circuit interconnects do.
Printing is another integration approach for bridging the electronics and textile industries. The electronics industry uses conductive inks to create components for printed circuit boards (PCBs). PCBs, along with sensors and actuators, are manufactured on thin films using various printing processes. While conductive inks traditionally are used for printing on films and papers, varying the viscosity of a conductive ink makes it possible to print on different substrates including textiles. Printing, regardless of the industry, can be an inexpensive, high-throughput process. The ability to print directly on textiles creates a pathway for integrating electronic devices, sensors and interconnects on textile substrates or pre-fabricated garments. This process is critical to the marriage of the electronics and textiles industries for future development of wearable technology.
Long-Term Durability
One of the biggest challenges of integrating textiles and electronics is the durability of the wearable device. Most electronic components are rigid and inflexible, whereas textiles can have a range of flexibility and stretchability based on the end use. Electronic components must be modified to withstand the repeated mechanical stresses induced by the textile. Currently, printed circuits on textiles lose conductivity and mechanical robustness after multiple uses or washes. The addition of a protective layer over the conductive ink can help preserve the integrity and performance of the textile circuit.
Researchers at NCSU investigated the robustness of textile circuits after laminating a polyurethane film over screen-printed conductive ink (See Figure 1). The thermoplastic film not only encapsulates the ink, protecting it from mechanical damage, but the film also exhibits a self-healing effect where microcracks in the conductive ink can be repaired as the textile returns to its unstrained state. The result is a sturdy circuit that can be ironed onto an existing textile substrate in any position, allowing for easy individual customization of each device. Other printing technologies, such as a direct-write process — widely used in the electronics industry — permit highly detailed conductive designs that cannot be achieved through screen printing processes (See Figure 2). In this way, wearable prototypes can be fabricated quickly and tested without the detailed manufacturing processes currently used.
NSCU students and researchers have an immediate goal to conduct human trials for a electrocardiogram sensing smart garment in conjunction with the ASSIST center, as well as continue interfacing with the standards organizations to develop the right standards for this burgeoning industry. The work in wearable technology occurring at ASSIST bodes well for the future of healthcare. Imagine a smart shirt that monitors vital signs daily and transmits the information to your doctor. The possibilities that textiles offer as a platform for wearable technology is promising, and the technology is now closer than ever before.
Editor’s note: Dr. Jesse S. Jur is an assistant professor in the Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science department at NCSU’s College of Textiles. Amanda Myers, Allison Bowles, Hasan Shahariar and Raj Bhakta are members of Jur’s research group on Nano EXtended Textiles (NEXT).
France-based Porcher Industries has announced a 50 million euro ($53 million) growth and restructuring plan. The company will add weaving capacity and quality control technology at plants in the United States, Europe and China to support its automotive airbag and aerospace interiors businesses. The restructuring initiative will focus on streamlining efficiency and improving resources for the company, which has more than 2,000 employees and 14 manufacturing sites on four continents. Its five business units — Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Building, Industrial, and Sport & Leisure — will be unified using a single enterprise resource planning solution. The company also will recruit specific management, operational and technology personnel identified as being crucial to successful growth.
Porcher was recently acquired by Warwick Capital, and André Genton was named chairman of the Executive Management Board. Genton is committed to increasing turnover for the group from approximately 300 million euros to 500 million euros within the next five years.
Turkey-based nonwovens producer Mogul Co. Ltd. reports it has added a cross-lapped spunlace line to its plant near Istanbul. Products manufactured using the line will be marketed under the Durell® brand name. The cross-lapped arrangement of carded fiber produces a nonwoven with comparable machine direction (MD) and cross direction (CD) tensile strengths. Mogul reports the fabrics, with a MD:CD ratio of 0.8 to 1.1, are suitable for applications where multi-directional fabric strength is needed including automotive, wipes, building materials, medical, personal care, home textiles and lamination, among other applications.
Mogul also recently introduced Madaline, a nonwoven product that is produced using a patented bicomponent technology to extrude one-of-a-kind filament designs that are then subjected to high-pressure water jets to shear, fibrillate, entangle and consolidate the microfilaments into a fabric. Mogul reports Madaline offers similar touch and drape to a traditional textile, but with the filtration and barrier properties found in nonwovens.
Research performed at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, has shown finer raw cotton in a loose form to be the best fiber for absorbing oil from a spill.
TIEHH faculty worked with the Texas Tech Department of Mechanical Engineering and Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory, as well as the Southern Regional Research Center at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in New Orleans on the project. Two high school seniors — Ronald Kendall Jr. and Luke Kitten — also assisted with the research.
The study looked at finer and coarser cotton in loose form, as well as in needlepunched and hydroentangled nonwovens forms. The study showed finer cotton in loose form exhibited superior oil absorbency.
“The oil spill issue has become a global issue, as it affects human health and environment,” said Seshadri Ramkumar, lead author of the study and a professor in the institute’s Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory, where the research was conducted. “So far, most oil sorbents are synthetic-based, which also leads to problems in marine environments. Our goal is to enable a biodegradable and natural product to be an efficient and cost-effective oil sorbent.”
Luxembourg-based Orion Engineered Carbons S.A. will expand capacity of carbon black at its Sweden-based Norcarb Engineered Carbons AB plant. The expansion is in response to growing demand from the fiber, adhesives and sealants, and wire and cables markets.
“The expansion of capacity in Malmö is one more step in Orion’s rapid realignment of our portfolio toward higher value added specialty and technical rubber applications,” said Jack Clem, CEO, Orion.
“Products from Malmö will primarily support our customers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. This action is a reflection of the high confidence of our customers in Orion’s products and technical support capabilities.
Figure 1. IACMI core technology areas tie to cross-cutting areas and institute metrics
Improved advanced composites manufacturing technologies developed by IACMI aid the integration of innovative practices and methods in manufacturing.
Dr. Uday Vaidya
Transitioning the United States into a clean energy economy will require the widespread adoption of transformative technologies that save energy and reduce emissions. Regulatory actions such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) aim to increase fuel economy standards for automobiles significantly by 2025. Fiber-reinforced polymer composites are a key enabler of energy efficiency gains and emissions reductions. High strength-to-weight ratios, exceptional durability and directional properties are some of the key benefits that make composite materials a valued choice for high-performance products across multiple markets and industries.
The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI), Knoxville, Tenn., is accelerating the transition of advanced composites manufacturing technologies into the marketplace to facilitate the integration of innovative methodologies and practices across supply chains. The low-cost, energy-efficient production of advanced fiber-reinforced polymer composites in vehicles, wind turbines, and compressed gas storage applications is expected to revitalize U.S. manufacturing and innovation and yield substantial economic and environmental benefits. IACMI contributes to this vision through high-value research, development and demonstration programs that reduce technical risk for manufacturers while training the next-generation composites workforce.
IACMI’s Scope
IACMI has several focus areas with advanced composites:
Materials and Processes;
Modeling and Simulation;
Compressed Gas Storage;
Wind Technologies, and
Vehicles.
Composite Materials and Processes (M&P) technology focuses on material intermediates such as pellets, tapes, fabrics, low-cost carbon fibers (LCCF), recycling of carbon and glass fibers, nondestructive evaluation (NDE), materials characterization, novel manufacturing methods, and more efficient precursors and conversion processes. The M&P area is led out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, with partnerships from Vanderbilt University and University of Kentucky.
Modeling and Simulation (M&S) technology enables digital product definition through the use of modeling and simulation tools as a foundational methodology for designing, manufacturing, and sustaining composite products; education and training of the next-generation workforce in design tools and methodologies; and exploring multi-physics phenomena for manufacturing polymer composite materials and structures into simulation tools. The M&S technology is led out of Purdue University, Indiana.
Compressed Gas Storage (CGS) technology is advancing conformal tank designs, braided composite preform designs, and methods that enable reductions in safety factors to reduce the amount of carbon fiber required in tank designs. Composite materials help meet the growing demand for compressed natural gas (CNG) vessels and eventually hydrogen storage tanks — as a low-emissions alternative to gasoline and diesel. The CGS area is led out of University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI), Ohio.
Wind Turbine technology explores thermoplastic resins, segmented wind turbine designs, automation to reduce cost and labor content, and joinable pultruded wind turbine components. Today’s composite wind turbines-ordinarily made with thermosetting resins are time-consuming to produce, economically challenging to recycle, and increasingly difficult to transport as blade lengths grow in size to capture more energy. The wind technology is led out of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colo.
Vehicle Technology seeks to reduce manufacturing costs and improve recyclability through innovative design concepts, low-cost tooling, robust modeling and simulation tools, effective joining technologies, and reliable defect detection methods. Rising fuel economy standards which aim to reduce emissions and improve energy security are compelling automakers to seek vehicle mass reduction opportunities through the integration of lightweight materials. The vehicles area is led out of the Corktown facility in Detroit and Michigan State University, East Lansing, Detroit.
Key Subtopics
IACMI’s technical activities are organized by key subtopics that cut across the above five Technology Areas (See Figure 1). These subtopics capture the full range of enabling technologies needed to maximize progress against 5- and 10-year IACMI technical targets of cost, energy, and waste reduction for composites manufacturing technologies.
Figure 2. Low-cost carbon fiber, wide tow fiber — 450-650 tow count — produced at the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Advances in carbon fiber technologies via alternative precursors, efficient processes, and interface engineering are critical to cost reduction at improved performance. Alternative precursors such as textile grade polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and processing approaches are being adopted to engineer carbon fiber materials that yield superior final part properties at reduced production energy levels. Recent advances at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have enabled a low-cost carbon fiber (LCCF) at properties and cost metrics for automotive, wind and CGS (See Figure 2).
Figure 3. Seat back rest tool for molding sheet molding compound, long fiber thermoplastics and fiber preforms. Image courtesy of the University of Tennessee, IACMI Materials and Processing technology area
Innovative reinforcements, resins, additives and intermediates are enabling fast cycle times, reduced scrap, integrated features and reduction of embodied energy. Integrated fabrics, braids, preforms and pre-pregs are used in rapid fabrication of door inner, floor, seat back rest, roof, trunk and under the hood auto components, wind turbine blades and composite tanks (See Figure 3). Advanced manufacturing techniques such as injection overmolding, stampable preforms, locally stitched preforms, high-pressure resin transfer molding are some examples that reduce composites manufacturing costs and energy consumption and improve component performance and recyclability. Figure 4 illustrates a locally reinforced preform to provide directional properties. IACMI has partnership with the Long Island, N.Y.-based Composites Prototyping Center (CPC), for prototyping and fabrication.
Composite recycling is of growing interest to the composites community. The next-generation technologies feature novel and increasingly complex combinations and formulations of fiber-reinforced composites, but these are difficult to recycle using current practices. Since recycled chopped carbon fiber costs 70-percent less to produce and uses up to 98-percent less energy to manufacture compared to virgin carbon fiber, recycling technologies are creating new markets from the estimated 29 million pounds of composite scrap sent to landfills annually. Advances in recycling technologies including pyrolysis, solvolysis, mechanical shredding and cement kiln incineration are enabling recycle, reuse, and remanufacture of products. IACMI has strategic partnerships in the recycling technologies with the American Composites Manufacturer’s Association (ACMA) and Composites Recycling Technology Center (CRTC), Port Angeles, Washington.
Figure 4. Laystitch preform for compressed gas storage application. Image courtesy of the University of Dayton Research Institute, IACMI technology area for CGS
Additive technologies in composites manufacturing offer a high-rate, low-cost alternative to traditional tool-making approaches, and shows promise as an effective processing method for printing composite structures from reclaimed structural fibers. Additive approaches have the potential to significantly reduce composite tool-making lead times and increase the recovery and reuse of structural carbon fibers.
Advanced thermoplastic resins into current production processes: Thermoplastics have shorter cycle times and are more suitable for recycling. Increasing the use of thermoplastics for requires a variety of activities, including developing of novel in situ polymerization methods to improve thermoplastic fatigue performance, and establishing design-for-recyclability methods.
Design, Prototyping, and Validation (DPV) are integral steps to turning conceptual designs into high-performance components and verifying that these components meet their intended product requirements. These product development steps rely on a robust understanding of material limits, processing capabilities, principles of mechanical design, and best manufacturing practices to optimize the safety, reliability, and performance of a system.
IACMI is advancing innovative vehicle design concepts by addressing activities such as facilitating round-robin studies that compare composites joint and interface designs for various assembly methods, establishing design optimization approaches for manufacturability and recyclability, validating composite crash simulation models, and creating techno-economic analyses of automotive composite parts to provide manufacturers with design, prototyping, and validation examples.
Modeling and simulation tools for automotive applications require a range of activities including assessing variability in end-to-end simulated manufacturing processes, conducting accelerated tests and validating models with experimental data, incorporating composite joint designs in crashworthiness models, and sharing key materials properties to inform simulation efforts. The integration of these efforts in IACMI is enabling to reduce product development time.
Industry Outlook
Commercializing technologies for low-cost, energy efficient manufacturing of advanced fiber reinforced polymer composites for vehicles, wind turbines, and CGS applications will unleash significant economic and
environmental benefits and help to revitalize U.S. manufacturing and innovation. IACMI-The Composites Institute is playing a pivotal role in shaping future competitiveness and job growth in the United States, and the technical activities needed to accelerate progress toward this vision.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Uday Vaidya is the UT/ORNL governor’s chair in Advanced Composites Manufacturing, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and chief technology officer at the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI), Knoxville.
