14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the incredible variety of clothes today, in terms of shape, size, texture, color, it seems that we never find the right clothes anymore. While many shopping addicts love wandering from mall to mall and store to store, most people have a really hard time finding the right clothes.
Don't you hate it when you've seen a piece of clothing that would look great on you, only to find that no size fits you just the way you want it?
Well, thankfully, the people at Philips gave it a lot of thought and even came up with the solution: the auto-adaptive clothes. In short, the consumer electronics giant has come up with a way to change the size, shape and style of clothes by weaving "muscle wires" into the fabric. The wires are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them.
How do they work?
Well, you put on a pair of pants, or blouse, jacket, etc., and connect up to a power source that changes the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width. The transformation is permanent, so they will always fit you exactly, with the condition that you don't gain or lose too much weight. As this also happens to ordinary clothes, they have yet to think about how to keep your ideal waist size. But that's not their problem anymore.
If you wondered how come an electronics producer was thinking about clothes, I should tell you that there's a lot of physics involved in the process.
Fabrics are formed of textile fibers. Fabrics can be stretchable and often include elastic components or fibers that allow them to stretch and return to form. The surface area of a fabric is usually fixed. To reduce the surface area of a fabric, it is usually folded, bent, or bundled. To increase the surface area of a fabric, it usually must be stretched over a surface or pulled against some other form of resistance. Often a fabric will not return to its original surface area after a certain number of stretches.
The name of the special fabric is Muscle Wire, and it's a conductive fiber which changes shape at the passing of an electric current. They are made of a shape memory alloy (SMA) that can assume radically different forms or "phases" at distinct temperatures.
When they are interwoven with textile fibers, they create circuits. Then, an electric current can be selectively passed to an area on the fabric using a switch and a power source. The clothing has three current paths that are made up of conductive fibers through which electric current can be passed from a small power source. It also has a switch for the wearer of the garment to select which current path he or she chooses.
For instance, you can attach a portable electronic device, such as a cellphone or an mp3-player to it. When the wearer sets the switch to power the electronic device, current passes from the power source through the current path to the clip and into the attached device.
When electricity passes through, they act as resistors and release electrical energy as heat. Current paths can be used to heat the garment in selected areas, where the Muscle Wires will bend until they take on the exact size of the body in that area.
The invention provides many advantages for commercial applications and the makers claim that the material can withstand millions of bends without breaking or failing to take on the desired shape.