A Comparative Study of Heating Elements Used for the Development of Textile Heaters

The focus of this paper is to make a comparison between five different types of conductive, heatable samples. These textile samples have been produced according to the five most important implementation techniques such as knitting, weaving, embroidery, printing and nonwoven padding. The idea is to identify a conductive option best suitable for a heating application. This study was divided into four major steps: choosing the adequate materials, swatch production, conductivity measurements and heating behaviour assessment. The first three methods use electro conductive wires as heating elements, the fourth uses conductive ink and the fifth uses carbon black coating. For all of them, resistance, current and heat distribution was measured. The results show that the best options for the development of a wearable textile heating system are the embroidered and the woven techniques, as their mechanical strength and elasticity, is sufficiently high and the fabric/substrate structure allows the insertion/deposition of different types of heating elements.