Challenges faced by technical textiles outlined
The textile industry is possibly the first industrial sector in Germany to take an across-the-board view of the requirements of the coming decades. Social megatrends and projections of individual sectors were taken into account to determine the research requirement of the 16 institutes affiliated to the Textile Research Council (Forschungskuratorium Textil – FKT).
“Ultimately research and industry, who annually initiate more than 100 projects funded by the German government and the EU in collaboration with our research institutes, are now able today to focus on the market needs of tomorrow and beyond”, explains FKT Managing Director Dr. Klaus Jansen speaking to journalists.
The ‘Perspectives 2025’, a project of the future, was presented to an international professional audience for the first time at the TECHTEXTIL press conference. It also appears as a brochure on the Internet at http://www.textilforschung.de/pdfcat/Techtex2025/. It outlines the challenges for technical textiles in terms of 10 areas of growth which also coincide with key issues for the leading trade fair for technical textiles in June next: architecture, clothing, energy, nutrition, health, mobility, production / logistics, living, city of the future and basic topics that arise from demographic changes, scarcity of resources and climate change. Over one year, the journey to the future included workshops and seminars in which more than 80 scientists, business people and students participated, and it resulted in the evaluation of over 250 ideas and potential solutions for the use of technical textiles.
One example: in the sector of medical textiles, in addition to the headlines already made by textile adipose tissue replacement (Hohenstein Institute) or a self-cleaning bronchial stent, FKT considers several application areas to be particularly promising:
Implants: Development of bone, ligament and sinew replacement as nerve fibres based on textile structures; stem cell cultivation on textile substrates for both transplant friendly skin replacement and implants suitable for endoscopic use.
Therapy: Therapeutic textiles provide a controlled release of active pharmaceutical ingredients. This makes targeted dosage possible with sensory assistance inside the body (implants), via the skin and also in surgical dressings.
Health protection: Smart textiles in clothing and flooring for interactive vital signs monitoring and / or signalling (automatic emergency call); antimicrobial textiles to prevent nosocomial infections (hospital bugs).
Monitoring: Sensory based bedding to monitor and diagnose sleep-specific bodily functions such as the regularity of breathing, heart rate and optimisation of sleep cycles in cases of irregularities or snoring.
Exercise therapy: External activation to stimulate movement in cases of rehabilitation measures, gymnastics, strength and fitness training. Selective mobility restriction and joint support ensures correct posture and accelerates the healing process.
Prof. Jansen said the textile industry is “especially innovation friendly” with technical textiles and fibre-based materials already making up more than 50 per cent of sales. Based on a survey by the Centre for European Economic Research in 2010, almost one-fifth (19.3 per cent) of the turnover came from new products. Since the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM) was initiated by the Federal German Ministry of Economics in 2008 investment of Euro 68 million has been made in 570 projects in the field of textile technology research, of which 179 are from research facilities of the textile, clothing and leather industry.