European Network to connect research and innovation efforts on advanced Smart Textiles


Acronym:CONTEXT
Project start:11.10.2018
Project end:10.10.2022
Programme:COST
Project number:CA17107
Institute position in the project:Partner
Project leader at the institute:Alena Opálková Šišková
http://www.context-cost.eu/

CONTEXT COST Action objective is to create a network of European researchers and main relevant stakeholders in order to develop joint ideas and initiatives which can be turned into advanced smart textile products.
A smart textile material is a “functional textile material, which interacts actively with its environment, i.e. it responds or adapts to changes in the environment”. They find applications in all sectors and especially in health and medical; automotive and aeronautic; personal protective equipment; sports and wearables and buildings and interior design.
Although several R&D projects have been carried out during last years in that field, most of the prototypes obtained haven’t reached the market due to many reasons such as: product reliability, production economies, missing a demonstrated use case and/or value proposition.
In that sense, what CONTEXT aims is to ignite research and innovation projects (with high TRLs output expected) by joining under the same network and through Working Groups, people with the right competencies and experiences from the academic and research fields, the industrial sector and from clusters.
CONTEXT will promote the development of a joint research roadmap for smart textiles, will foster the transfer of knowledge among different actors in order to find suitable applications in various multidisciplinary fields, will act as stakeholder platform to identify needs and requirements from different points of view in a bottom-up approach and will promote networking activities in order to attract talent, build more and better research projects with more consciousness on the objectives of creating exploitable results.

In this multilateral project, Institute of materials and machine mechanics SAS is focused on the use of materials from renewable resources for the purpose of preparation a metal matrix composite with enhanced physical and/or mechanical properties. Due to the increasing problems with waste and environmental pollution, the main idea of the proposed project is the use of cellulose-based waste for the potential preparation of reinforcing phases or predefines structures such as textiles. The project will aim to verify the possibilities of processing the prepared carbon materials by conventional technologies for the production of composite materials, pressure infiltration and powder metallurgy. The emphasis will be on the complex characterization of the properties of the intermediates products and prepared composites, which will enable the identification of the most suitable areas of possible applications.