Particle doped fiber based sensors for the monitoring of structures

Many inherently textile based structures can benefit from the integration of sensors for monitoring applications. Although most commonly textile clothing comes to mind, application fields can be extended to other areas such as civil engineering, aerospace engineering and mobility. For the integration of sensors into these structures, the sensors must be filament based, in order to ensure the seamless incorporation into the standard processing methods. In this work, bicomponent thermoplastic filaments are developed. These have the same textile properties as the currently used textiles, with the added functionality that they have an electro-mechanical response to be used as strain sensors. It is shown that bicomponent, conductive filaments can be produced using a pilot spinning line. The resulting filaments can be furthermore used as strain sensors with a gauge factor of 0.013. Despite this small value, the homogeneity of the measurements and versatility of the melt spinning process show promise for this technology.