Effect of Stretching on Thermal Behaviour of Electro-Conductive Weft-Knitted Composite Fabrics

This experiment presents a study carried out on the electric charge passing textiles for heat production in compression weft-knitted composite fabrics used for medical purposes. The aim was to flourish compression support of knitted structure with integrated highly sensitive metal (silver) coated polyamide multifilament yarns and to evaluate its heat origination attributes after stretching in different levels as well as changes of the temperature during the time. A flat double needle-bed knitting machine was utilized to fabricate the selected specimens together with elastomeric inlay-yarn incorporated into the structure for compression generation and silver coated polyamide yarn laid as ground yarn in a plated structure for heat generation. Six different variants depending on the metal coated yarn amount used and the fabric structure along with two types of the conductive yarn linear density were fabricated for this research work. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were preoccupied to show the morphology of conductive yarn and thermal pictures were captured to study the evenness of the heat over the surface of composite fabrics depending on conductive yarn distribution in the pattern repeat. The temperature profile of fabricated composite fabrics and comparison of the heat generation by specimens after stretching in different levels was studied.