Flexible pressure sensors for smart protective clothing against impact loading

The development of smart protective clothing will facilitate the quick detection of injuries from contact sports, traffic collisions and other accidents. To obtain real-time information like spatial and temporal pressure distributions on the clothing, flexible pressure sensor arrays are required. Based on a resistive fabric strain sensor we demonstrate all flexible, resistive pressure sensors with a large workable pressure range (0–8 MPa), a high sensitivity (1 MPa−1) and an excellent repeatability (lowest non-repeatability ±2.4% from 0.8 to 8 MPa) that can be inexpensively fabricated using fabric strain sensors and biocompatible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The pressure sensitivity is tunable by using elastomers with different elasticities or by the pre-strain control of fabric strain sensors. Finite element simulation further confirms the sensor design. The simple structure, large workable pressure range, high sensitivity, high flexibility, facile fabrication and low cost of these pressure sensors make them promising candidates for smart protective clothing against impact loading.