textile pressure sensor made of flexible plastic optical fibers纺织塑料光纤压力传感器的灵活.pdf

Sensors 2008, 8, 4318-4329; DOI: 10.3390/s8074318 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /sensors Article Textile Pressure Sensor Made of Flexible Plastic Optical Fibers Markus Rothmaier 1,*, Minh Phi Luong 1 and Frank Clemens 2 1 Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland 2 Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, Laboratory for High Performance Ceramics, Ueberlandstrasse 129, 8600 Duebendorf, Switzerland * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail: markus.rothmaier@empa.ch Received: 2 July 2008; in revised form: 23 July 2008 / Accepted: 23 July 2008 / Published: 25 July 2008 Abstract: In this paper we report the successful development of pressure sensitive textile prototypes based on flexible optical fibers technology. Our approach is based on thermoplastic silicone fibers, which can be integrated into woven textiles. As soon as pressure at a certain area of the textile is applied to these fibers they change their cross section reversibly, due to their elastomeric character, and a simultaneous change in transmitted light intensity can be detected. We have successfully manufactured two different woven samples with fibers of 0.51 and 0.98 mm diameter in warp and weft direction, fo