SMDTex – Selected Research Projects for 2017 - Summary :
Project SMDTex-2017-1
Project SMDTex-2017-2
Project SMDTex-2017-3
Project SMDTEX-2017-41
Project SMDTex-2017-42
Project SMDTex-2017-43
Project SMDTex-2017-6
SMDTex – proposed Research Project for 2016 - details :
| Project SMDTex-2017-1 |
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Concerned Theme: 1
Description :
Recycling of textile materials is a resource efficient strategy to develop new products by reducing the use of raw materials and virgin sources. There are different ways for recycling textiles, depending on the quality of the fabric. However, some old garments cannot be recycled because of the presence of chemicals. They have been introduced either during textile manufacturing, finishing or coating processes, or at the use phase, as dirt or soil. Removing of chemical additives in an eco-friendly way would add value to textile recycling, and would generate upgraded quality of recycled textile. The aim of the PhD work will be to find the best way of removing chemicals for textile recycling applications, with a minimal environmental impact evaluated by LCA. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for the systematic evaluation of the environmental aspects of a product or service system through all stages of its life cycle.
Research mobility period planning :
Literature survey on chemicals issues for recycling of PET and Cotton textiles: Recycling process and Chemical additives in wasted garments. Bibliographic research on the main removal processes associated with each kind of chemicals. LCA of garment life cycle scenarios with focus on the chemical removal process before recycling. Laboratory experiments on representative fabrics. LCA on the chemical process and optimization.
Conceiving and designing suitable unit operations for removing chemicals. Optimization taking into account environment, quality and technical feasibility. This experimental research will be made on representative fabrics and Transposed to “real” wasted garments at the end.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc in Textile Engineering, or Materials Science. Knowledge of basic chemistry, mathematics, modelling and polymer physical-chemistry. The ability to independently work in the lab.
Proposed teaching program (55 ECTS) : : ENSAIT :
TUIASI
Soochow University
| Project SMDTex-2017-2 |
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Concerned Theme: 2
Description :
Nowadays, developing sustainable approaches to manufacture became a critical global concern. Key aspects to be analysed according to this goal include approaching and practicing design for environment (DfE), in line also with the improvement of remanufacturing efficiency and effectiveness (REE). In addition, the concept of ‘design for remanufacture’ (DfRem) originates from the understanding that decisions made during the design process could have a considerable effect upon the REE.
Remanufacturing in the global fashion industry is a new and emerging phenomenon which aims at industrially remaking used clothes through various redesign stages so that they at least equals the newly manufactured ones in terms of quality. However in the fashion industry, remanufacturing is still at its infancy due to numerous challenges related to repeatability, unpredictability, lacks of standards, retailing, technology hurdles, etc., hence is predominantly craft-based in nature.
In this context, this PhD project should explore the key (operational and technical) requirements of fashion remanufacturing supply chains making a decisive contribution in organizing both product redesign and reverse logistics processes, such as disassembly, sorting, refurbishment and reassembly. In addition, the project should also focus both on the technical factors relating to DfRem – physical product properties and characteristics – and to determine and explain the operational factors that affect the integration of DfRem into a company's design process. In the central phases of the product development process, the study could include the ways the design team could focus on how to design the product.
DfRem being an integral part of DfE, the project should also consider the overall purpose of environmentally conscious design aimed at reducing the total environmental impact during a product life cycle. In the frame an information system of innovation management will be an important part for DfRem in order to cooperate (among designers, engineers and managers) with a common understanding of processes and goals.
Research mobility period planning :
Specific tasks in the 1st research mobility at Borås will include: a critical investigation of the state-of-art of both DfRem and remanufacturing supply chains – in context to fashion and apparel – in terms of basic design and construction principles and processes including reverse logistics and product development. Decisive factors and value streams for designing a competitive fashion remanufacturing supply chain will be identified. The key aspects of product, process and supply chain design will be explored in order to understand how they would affect the resources, capabilities and their deployment. In addition, aspects of process repeatability, costs and business scalability potential will also be identified.
Specific tasks in the 2nd research mobility at Iasi will include: development of specific product design strategies and tools, databases or knowledge-based systems, to assure effective decisions that would facilitate the integration of environmental considerations in product design, with DfRem in mind. The activities could introduce new parameters to enable the development of enhanced DfRem guidelines, for example based on life cycle thinking.
Specific tasks in the 3rd research mobility at Soochow will include: training and testing the LCA model developed for DfRem, using real and/or simulated data. Quantitative calculations to optimize the design and remanufacturing processes in order to lower the cost and enhance the eco-friendliness will be conducted to identify industrially viable strategies aimed at both economic and environmental sustainability parameters. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture. Suitable tool for innovation management, such as brainstorming, virtual prototyping, PLM, TRIZ, Phase–gate model, etc. can be selectively tried.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering or Industrial Economics or Textile Engineering and Management or similar subject with understanding of role of product development processes in such contexts. Proficiency in operational research tools and methods, life cycle analysis are highly recommended.
Proposed teaching program :
Borås: Supply Chain Management Theories for practice in textile and fashion (7.5 cr), Theory of Science (7.5 cr), Research Methods (7.5 cr), Lifecycle analysis (7.5 cr), Research Ethics, Academic Writing, …
TUIasi: Sustainable development value-based entrepreneurship (10 cr), Brand management and culture (10 cr), …
Soochow: Advanced clothing manufacture system (3.5 cr), Innovation Management (5 cr), …
| Project SMDTex-2017-3 |
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Concerned Theme: 3
Description :
Although numerous IT-enabled processes exist in the textile/fashion industry, these still lack an integrated knowledge-based digital technology platform to link together consumers, retailors, marketers, designers, as well as manufacturers. An advanced digital technology platform is urgently needed for developing novel business models to transform the traditional, labour intensive, fashion textile industry into a digitized knowledge-based supply chain. In these new business models, providing difference e-shopping services meeting consumers’ personalized requirements is a key issue to success. By exploiting the past fashion data (sales data, design elements, fashion images, consumer’s and designer’s evaluation, professional knowledge, …), an e-shopper can recommend relevant products to each specific consumer according to his/her profile, identified through online interactions with the shopper, and personalized requirements, in order to reduce returns and increase satisfaction. This doctoral project will focus on developing algorithms and methods for data analytics, acknowledging the specific needs of e-retailers offering fashion products. In addition to standard scenarios related to customer understanding and sales forecasting, the project will target the specific task of reducing the number of returns through consumer knowledge. the student will realize a number of online services as follows. 1. Recommendation: set up the customer profile and product profile, define the relation between these two profiles from the knowledge base, recommend the most relevant products for a specific consumer profile, and update the knowledge base from successful recommendations.
2. Reliability tracking: for each consumer, set up a reliability tracking document by extracting from his/her historic purchasing data, to be used against the fraudulent behavior “wardrobing” i.e., when a customer wears an item for a short period before returning it.
3. Sales forecasting: the forecasting has to deal with some singular constraints of the textile market such as for instance the volatile demand, the strong seasonality of sales, the wide number of items with short life cycle and so on. A more accurate and reliable forecasting model will be proposed by learning from data and simulating the benefits of the supply chain.
4. Clothing style classification: A great number of fashion data deal with images describing design elements, materials, colours, fashion themes and related ambiances. We will first set up a fashion database in order to associate each garment style with related theme and concrete and abstract design elements, then develop a semantic-based search engine for classifying styles into different classes for fashion trend identification and forecasting.
Research mobility period planning :
Investigate and analyse the techniques of fashion date processing and mining. Understand the context and domain of the study, especially the structure and classification of fashion data. Set up general mathematical models for developing the four previous services.
Develop the services of recommendation and reliability tracking by performing the related experimental work, implementing the methods and algorithms as software, validating the performance of the developed services by e-retailers and making adjustments by feedback, and establishing a virtuous cycle consisting of problem generation, solution, deployment and evaluation.
Develop the services of sales forecasting and clothing style classification. Collecting new fashion data. Investigate the textile and fashion industries of different types in China. Apply the models in practice. Evaluate the model and provide constrains in application.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
* Lichuan Wang (SOOCHOW UNIVERSITY, CHINA) has been a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer with Soochow University, where he researched computerized design of industrial fashion products and sustainable apparel engineering. He received the Ph.D. degree in automation and industrial information engineering from the University of Lille 1, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France, in 2012.
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc in Computer science, Information technology or a similar subject with a profound interest in retail management, CRM or e-commerce. Documented proficiency in programming, preferably in Python, R or MatLab, is expected. Experience in data mining is recommended.
Proposed teaching program :
Proposed courses Nb. of ECTS
ENSAIT 21.5 ECTS
Sustainable development for industrial products and processes 4 Economic intelligence and innovation dynamics 10 Data Mining (SI-MAPP 04) 2,5 International management (SI-MANA02) 4
Boras
Ethics 3.5 Science Theory 7.5 Research Methods 7.5
Soochow 17.5 ECTS (eq.)
Advanced textile materials (20h) 3.5 (eq.) Sensory Evaluation of textile and clothing (20h) 3.5 (eq.) Advance clothing manufacture system (20h) 3.5 (eq.) Chinese Culture(36h) 3 (eq.) Chinese Studies(36h) 3 (eq.) Industries Communication(20h) 2 (eq.)
| Project SMDTex-2017-41 |
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Concerned Theme: 4
Description :
Materials nowadays become “more intelligent”, containing novel functionalities or sensory components. In the textile area, several functions can be achieved by finishing techniques, i.e. physical and/or chemical modifications of textile surfaces. But the integration of electronic components and sensors still suffers from incompatibilities between soft, flexible, textile and wash durability. The project will emphasize on the development of functional or smart textiles based on the deposition of functional polymers or multiple layers using 3D print technology. The research will focus on the development of 3 tracks (1 sensor, conductive tracks and antenna and on the basic science behind successful production of such materials with 3D printing (elasticity of the functional polymer, influence of the thickness of the base layer related quality parameters on the adhesion, the wash performance, the maintenance…), as well as surface properties, surface analysis. This research work will deliver general knowledge /design rules that can be applied in development of a variety of sensors.
Research mobility period planning :
DDevelopment of functional or smart textiles based on the deposition of functional polymers or blends of functional compounds and polymers using 3D print technology on textile fabrics (PET, PA). Important topics apart from deposition of polymers will be surface properties, surface analysis, adhesion. Characterisation of functionality.
Development of the microencapsulation technique, characterization of the functionalized fabrics and comparison between layer-by-layer and microencapsulation techniques. Compounding of functional polymers by incorporation of nanofillers. 3D print technology from nanostructured polymers on textile fabrics (PET, PA). Thermal and rheological properties of nanostructured polymers. Analysis surface properties, surface analysis, adhesion, textile performance and maintenance. Application of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tool to evaluate the proposed technologies. Characterisation of functionality. Analysis of the signal coming from the smart textile.
Electrospinning of functional polymers on textile fabrics, interaction functional molecules and solvent, textile performance and maintenance, industrialization of production and assembly of smart textiles. Characterisation of functionality.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc typically in textile engineering, polymer engineering, physical chemistry or rheology.
Proposed teaching program (55 ECTS) :
University of Borås:
ENSAIT :
Soochow :
| Project SMDTex-2017-42 |
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Concerned Theme: 4
Description :
Immobilized enzyme on fibrous porous textile structure can provide an efficient tool for pollutant degradation in various environments (soil, air, and water) and can provide an efficient way to depollute air, water and soil by eliminating specific pollutants. However, as enzymes have restricted optimal activity and work in optimal pH and temperature conditions, they are readily inactivated or denatured under various conditions (ex: soil in very cold climates, pH or salinity of water, hot conditions) An extremozyme is an enzyme, often created by extremophiles, that can function under extreme environmental conditions such as very high pH, very low pH, high temperature, high salinity, or other factors, that would otherwise denature typical enzymes. Immobilisation of these extremozymes on textile will offer new catalytic alternatives for pollutant degradation when textiles are used in harsh conditions as geotextiles (ex: cold climates), or as filters for air or water depollution.
The aim of this phD will be to graft pollutant degrading extremozymes on textile fibrous surfaces, for both pollutant capture and degradation in extreme conditions. Ecotechnologies (plasma) and bio-based polymers will be used for enzyme immobilization on textiles. The possible use of the so functionalized textile will be explored for applications such as air filters or as depolluting geotextiles
Research mobility period planning :
Complete literature work on Robust and extremozymes with the ability of degrading specific pollutants (in air and soil). Selection of one or two enzymes before immobilizing them on textiles. Surface grafting using plasma ecotechnology will be carried to graft the enzymes.
Complete literature work on Robust and extremozymes with the ability of degrading specific pollutants (in air and soil). Selection of one or two enzymes before immobilizing them on textiles. Surface grafting using plasma ecotechnology will be carried to graft the enzymes.
Testing the depolluting efficiency of the functionalized textile in extreme conditions.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc typically in Textile engineering, polymer, chemistry.
Proposed teaching program :
ENSAIT:
University of Borås:
Soochow University:
| Project SMDTex-2017-43 |
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Concerned Theme: 4
Description :
Far infrared ray (FIR) emitting fabrics are claimed to be functional textiles improving health and well-being. FIR textiles are derived from traditional fibres by incorporation of ceramic nanofillers with appropriate electromagnetic absorption end emission properties. The purpose of this project is to analyse the effects of ceramic fillers (powders) added to a textile substrate on the thermal comfort. These additives (i.e. oxyde, sulfate, carbonate, phosphate and silicate derivatives) will be deposited on several textiles structures by finishing processes in order to their far infrared radiation effects, which can offer thermo-regulation properties and improve blood micro-circulation when in contact with the skin. The performances of the developed functional textile structures will be also compared to those obtained from commercial fibers.
Therefore, the project will be focused on the development of light fabrics in order to improve thermal comfort for extreme conditions such as sportswear application. To succeed in, the work plan will be divided in different steps, i.e. (i) selection of a suitable formulation of additives based on far infra-red properties, (ii) manufacture of knitted fabrics with different contexture, (iii) textile functionalization, (iv) determination of thermal and mass transfer properties (clothing isolation, evaporative resistance, radiation properties…), (v) determination and analyses of thermo-physiological responses and subjective sensations of human subjects.
In ENSAIT, the study will be oriented on the thermo-chemical characterization of the ceramic nanofillers, the manufacture of the functional textile fabrics, and the evaluation of thermal performances.
In Politecnico di Torino, the candidate will focus on the assessment of the effects of FIR functionalized garments on human physiology by wear trial tests on a panel of subjects in a controlled environment under controlled physical activity. The candidate will design the proper experimental protocol which include the measure of skin temperatures and humidity, heart rate, oxygen uptake. and will conduct the tests for the functionalized garment and the placebo one with the aim of highlighting the effect of FIR garments on human physiology.
In Soochow University, the concern objective measurement and subjective evaluation of thermal comfort will be arranged to verify the innovated prototypes created at ENSAIT and POLITO. While a complete assessment system will be established on the base of the experimental research in ENSAIT and POLITO. This system will be applied in industry and provide new technologies for the products development of functional garments.
Research mobility period planning :
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
She participated in several national and European projects and collaborates with national and international textile firms in developing industrial research and innovation projects. Since 2010, she holds the chair of High performance textile applications and Thermodynamics for Materials Science at the MSc in Materials Science in Torino.
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc typically in polymer engineering, physical chemistry or rheology. The knowledge of textile science, specially functionalization, thermal comfort will be also appreciated.
Proposed teaching program :
ENSAIT:
POLITECNICO di Torino:
Soochow :
| Project SMDTex-2017-6 |
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Concerned Theme: 6
Description :
The project will be aimed at optimizing the design of a piece of garment for people with disabilities in terms of ergonomic and thermal comfort. For people with an atypical morphology of the spinal cord, garment fit can be adapted to the torso actual shape with the aid of new digital 3D technologies that allow garment customization for achieving the best ergonomic comfort. People with disabilities have special needs also in terms of thermal comfort because they spend many hours seated or lying in bed, experiencing limited ventilation normally produced by body movements. In this situation, it is important that garments provide the proper thermal insulation, breathability and moisture transport.
In Ensait, thanks to the collaboration with the medical staff of the hospital of Lilles, the 3D model of the garment will be created taking into account the real spinal deformations of atypical morphologies registered by spinal X-ray pictures (front and back) or 3D EOS.
The final aim will be the development of a 3D adaptive model whose patterns are automatically modified in function of the pathology of the patient and its evolution during the patient's life. In Polito, the project will be focused on modelling heat transfer through one piece of garment by using the Finite Element Method with the final aim of optimizing thermal comfort. The input data of the model derive from fabric characterization tests (air permeability, thermal resistance,…), garment design (pumping effect, presence of openings or sewing), environmental data and physiological metabolic rate. In Soochow University, the objective measurement and subjective evaluation are arranged to verify the models established at ENSAIT and Polito. The models will be apply in practice uses and provide the constrains in application of the models.
Research mobility period planning :
Study of methods to scan body and analyse this date by anthropometrical methods. Analyse the process to make parametric mannequins and adapt it for people with physical disabilities. Development of the software which integrate and control the volume evolution of parametric mannequins in the scanned body of consumer.
Integration of the 3D garment model in a software for FEM modelling of heat balance across the human body. Identification of the boundary conditions and implementation of the bio-heat equation in the CFD software.
Assessment of models established at ENSAIT and Polito by both the objective measurement and subjective evaluation. The models will be apply in practice uses to provide the constrains in application of the models.
Co-supervisor’s presentation :
* Yan Chen (Soochow University) is Professor in Clothing Design and Engineering at Soochow University. She is specialised in textile and garment design, garment manufacture management, sensory evaluation of textile and clothing. She has published more than 20 papers in key textile journals in the last 5 years and supervised 5 PhD students. She has conducted one national research project (silk fabric performance research) and a number of provincial research projects in the area of interactive garment design system, evaluation and prediction of textiles and fashion products using intelligent system.
* Lichuan Wang (Soochow University) is a Post-doctor of Industrial Information Technology in Apparel Engineeringat National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silkin China. He is also working as a lecturer in Soochow University. He obtained his Master in garment engineering from Soochow University, China, in 2009 andthen received his Ph.D. degree of Automation and Industrial Information Technology from Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, France, in 2012. His main research interests include computerized design of industrial products, mass customization, human-centred design, and PLM system development.
Required competences for the doctorate candidate :
MSc typically in chemical engineering, with skills in software development (Matlab, C,C++,Java…).
Proposed teaching program :
ENSAIT: Garment design knowledge (6 ECTS), 2D/3D garment CAD systems (6 ECTS), imaging processing (6 ECTS).
POLITECNICO di Torino: High performance fibres for composites, sportswear and protection(6 ECTS), short course on entrepreneurship (1 ECTS), Writing scientific papers in English (2 ECTS).
SOOCHOW University: Advanced textile materials (3 ECTS), Sensory Evaluation of textile and clothing (3.5 ECTS), Advance clothing manufacture system (3.5 ECTS), Colour measurement and control for textile (3.5 ECTS), Eco-dyeing and finishing technology (3.5 ECTS), Chinese Culture(3.0 ECTS), Chinese Studies(3.0 ECTS)