Sensing mechanism of a carbon nanocomposite-printed fabric as a strain sensor

Conductive fabrics have gained widespread attention all around the electro-textile areas, owing to ease of fabrication and large freedom of design. In this paper, printed conductive knitted fabric was fabricated, which revealed favorable merits as a strain sensor such as large strain measurement range, good repeatability, good sensitivity to strain, high resistance to fatigue and low Young's modulus. The electro-mechanical behavior as well as sensing mechanism of the conductive fabric was further elaborated, based on tunneling conductive mechanism of conductive composites and gradient strain distribution of the sensing area. An electromechanical model of the conductive fabric was established and verified as effective, with maximum averaged error observed only 5.51%. The printed fabric and its model of sensing mechanism not only lay the foundation for further design, analysis and optimizations of textile-based conductive fabrics, but also reveal interesting material phenomena with a rather broad scope in the area of electronic textiles.