Melt Spinning of Elastic and Electrically Conductive Filament Yarns and their Usage as Strain Sensors

Abstract

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.