An investigation about smart garment design

?smart systems and materials? are getting more and more attention in recent years and have a great potential in the field of textiles. the smart/interactive textile structures that integrate electronics and textile materials and the materials that react to the external stimuli physically and chemically have been developed. these products, which are called 'the garments of the future', involve different functions such as protection, actuation, communication etc. the garments, which can heat the body, will possibly be one of the most widely used products for future use in daily life. these products are developed especially for the use of the people who work outside during their day. the thermal heating occurs in the thermal panels that are placed inside the garment. the procedures used to design this kind of garments can be grouped into two major topics. the first is to fulfill the needs of the comfort properties as it is an ordinary textile product while the second is to meet the functional requirements as a warming system. heating amount, durability, sufficient working time and determining the optimum power source are among the major parameters in point of designing of a portable structure.In this study, developments about smart/interactive garments having electronic functions were investigated. steel based conductive yarns were used to produce heating panels within the study being one of the first about interactive electronic garment design in turkey. portable power supplies were applied to fabric based panels to obtain heating function. beside an electronic circuit, a functional garment containing all system was designed and produced. performance of the heating garment prototype was evaluated on a thermal mannequin by testing under the cold weather environments.