MCE: EAS Trailblazers Department Seminar

Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar Series

Title: Thermal Design of Functional Wearable Textile-Based Materials

Abstract: Flexible electrical heaters have gained increasing interest for thermal management and localized heating, especially in wearables due to their inherent compliance. To leverage these advantages in a wearable architecture, I engineered textile-based heaters for 1) reusable personal protective equipment using dry heat decontamination and 2) self-sensing wearable thermoregulatory devices with feedback control. I show how the geometrical and material properties of the heaters—paired with the input power—can be designed to tune the thermal performance. In the first part of this talk, I show that these devices can achieve the high surface temperatures (> 100 °C) required for viral inactivation within short times (< 5 s) while maintaining a comfortable temperature at the skin (< 30 °C) for in situ use. In the second part of this talk, I use the textile heater itself for resistive temperature sensing to modulate temperature via closed-loop feedback. These approaches, combined with my work on actuation and energy harvesting in textile-based devices, will lead to my future vision of self-powered multifunctional wearables for spacesuits, assistive devices, and beyond.

Bio: Marquise D. Bell is a 5th-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University. Prior to joining Rice University, he obtained his B.S. in mechanical engineering with minors in computer science and mathematics from Baylor University in 2020. His research focuses on the thermal and fluidic design of composite sheet- and textile-based devices for assistive wearable applications. Specifically, Marquise uses fundamental heat transfer, thermodynamic, and fluid mechanic principles to characterize the system behavior of his devices. In 2020, Marquise was named a GEM Associate Fellow, and in 2021 he received a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) fellowship, through which he collaborates with textile engineers, polymer chemists, and electrical engineers at NASA Glenn Research Center and NASA Johnson Space Center to develop textile-based solutions to decrease the weight of spacesuit layers while integrating multifunctionality.

NOTE: At this time, in-person Mechanical and Civil Engineering Lectures are open to all Caltech students/staff/faculty/visitors.