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Intelligent textiles are predicted to see a surprising development in the future. The consequence of this revived interest has been the growth of automobile industry and the improvement of innovative methods for the incorporation of electrical and thermal features into textiles materials. In the present work, the development of a smart stretchable heating device integrated into a car-seat headrest has been identified as a target application. The need for smart conductive materials is becoming increasingly apparent, but they still represent a great challenge for the heating textile area, particularly in additive manufacturing. Polymer-based composites reinforced with copper and carbon powders, attractive as advanced coatings, seems to be good solutions to this issue. Such composites are now acquainted as ideal materials for electronic device engineering and fabrication, thanks to their excellent electrical and thermal conductivities while maintaining suitable mechanical compliance. For easier process and integration, an extrusion 3D printer is employed to achieve thin films coated on the surface of the textile substrate. The developed heater device consists of two principal copper electrodes (so-called power bus), and one heating resistor made of carbon composites designed in different configurations. Finite element models (FEM) are developed to predict the heating behavior of the tested fabric substrates under different pattern suggestions. Experimental measurements via a thermal camera are in consistent with the numerical solutions. It is pointed out that the design optimization based on an adequate tuning of the pattern’s parameters allows to solve inevitable matters in terms of temperature regularity and overheating effect.
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