Woven Micro Pumps for Wearable Fluid Technology

Circulating of fluid through woven into a garment was used successfully during the Apollo moon landings to regulate the astronauts’ body temperature. A new development by researchers at Switzerland-based École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne has resulted in miniature tube pumps in the form of fibers that allow high-pressure fluidic circuits to be woven into textiles without an external pump. Pressure and flow are created by electrohydrodynamics, propelling ions in a special dielectric fluid. No external mechanical pump is needed, so the system could be used to create advanced devices for simulation, or potentially as an assistive exoskeleton.  * * *Want to watch this podcast as a video? This Week in Engineering is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as End of the Line, Designing the Future, Manufacturing the Future, and the Engineering Roundtable