Abstract: Flexible strain sensors can be used as sensitive elements in smart textiles and widely applied in sports monitoring, rehabilitation, etc. In this paper, knitted fabric was used as substrate material and it is coated with conductive composites by printing method to produce conductive fabric with strain sensing properties, and the process was optimized, the factors that influence the performance of the conductive fabrics were analyzed. The optimized conductive fabric can be embedded in garment as sensing element for repeat use with a tensile modulus less than 0.5 MPa and strain higher than 20%.

Key words: smart textiles; flexible; strain; conductive fabric