Introduction:

Clothing is one of the three basic human needs. From primitive age, textile is used for clothing which was extended to
household and domestic purpose with progressive civilization. Thousands of years ago textile is used in different
forms such as sail cloth, tent, protective garments, ropes etc., basically these were all technical textiles and were
mainly used for their technical performance.

A smart textile are materials and structures that sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli, such as those
from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic or other sources.

Textile science today stands on a novel, unexplored and a fantasy filled horizon.

Textiles that can think for themselves! The idea itself is very progressive and in reality such textiles are a fact
technically possible today and commercially viable tomorrow. The technology of SMART TEXTILES is an integration
of almost all disciplines of applied sciences like:

v      Textile chemistry

v      Fiber technology

v      Cloth manufacturing technology

v      Material science

v      Structural mechanics and aviation hydraulics

v      Electronics and instrumentation

v      Telecommunication

v      Artificial intelligence

v      Molecular biology and organic chemistry

v      Molecular engineering and nanotechnology

v      Biotechnology

v      Information technology

v      Theory of chaos and randomizations.

These myriad sciences are blended with one another to produce fashionable textiles which make our lives comfortable
and luxurious. SMART TEXTILES, however, are not just restricted to clothing and apparels but extend to many other
applications like automobiles, robotics, aircrafts, medicine and surgery etc. The importance of these materials is so
profound at some places (e.g. military battlefields) that they virtually act as life saving materials.

Like many post World War-I innovations, smart textiles were also invented to meet the demands of the military. For
example, clothing that can change color to produce camouflage effects for protection was developed by the US army in
collaboration with various industrial firms to meet military requirements.

Smart textiles find applications in a plethora of fields. Some of the principle ones are:

Figure4. Recording of human breathing; (a) textile sensor in the form of a belt fastened around the patients chest, (b)
a record of the breathing rhythm.

3.4 Military applications:

         Optical fiber sensors integrated into textiles:

A) Fiber optics and sensors:

An optical fiber consists of a core (e.g. 1-10 micrometer in diameter for single mode silica glass fiber) surrounded by
cladding (125 micrometer in diameter) whose refractive index is slightly smaller than that of the core. The optical
fiber is normally coated with a protective layer of an outside diameter of approximately 250 micrometer. Inside the
fiber core, light rays incident on the core-cladding boundary at angles greater than the critical angle undergo total
internal reflection and are guided through the core without refraction.

The sensors made from optical fibers are small and flexible; they will not affect the structural integrity of the
composite materials; and can be integrated with the reinforcing fabric to form the backbones in structures. They are
based on a technology that enables devices to be developed for sensing numerous physical stimuli of mechanical,
acoustic, electric, magnetic and thermal natures. A number of sensors can be arranged along a single optical fiber by
using wavelength-, frequency-, and time- and polarization- division techniques to form 1-, 2 or 3- dimensional
distributed sensing systems.

B) Optical sensors in textiles:

Fig 6-optical sensors

Fiber optic sensors are ideal components to be embedded in textiles structural composites for monitoring the
manufacturing processes and internal health conditions.

One expects smart textiles to be the next biggest revolution in the textile industry after the manufacturing of synthetic
fibers.

On the manufacturing front, the textile industry in the past decade or so, has changed dramatically due to more
attention on smart textiles. The western world today focuses extensively on research and applications of smart textiles
compared to the classical ordinary clothing sectors. In the next twenty years; the smart fiber sector is expected to
scale astronomical heights so much so that they would become indispensable to human beings.

On the commercial front, however, these textiles are still to realize aspirations of potential buyers who would like to
have the product at reasonable prices. But that is quite natural since any new technology takes its own time to get
fully commercialized. And the smart textile industry is hardly a decade old. It can be anticipated that this industry will
have a huge market of its own, and the market will not be made entirely of the affluent class; in fact majority of
consumers would be from the middle class world over. Instead of cutting prices all the time, the textile industry
should focus on delivering customized products with enhanced functionality features like say, smartness. The future
does not lie in cutting costs all the time, but in being innovative at every process of product design.

Considering the current trends, the worldwide textile industry is over 50 million metric tons per year, and if smart
textiles can capture only a measly 1% (which is quite possible), it still means an industry worth more than 1 billion 11.
The intelligent textile sector represents the 21 st century of fibers and fabrics and articles made from them. This
segment is poised to rejuvenate the world textile sector completely in the coming few years. All in all, this field
promises to have a very bright future and it is hoped that the products of this industry will make inroads into the
households very soon.