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Smart materials are capable of recognising environmental stimuli, processing the information arising from the stimuli, and responding to it in an appropriate manner. It is well known that smart textiles provide some interesting possibilities in this regard. Consequently, smart textiles based on artificial muscles polymer actuators will provide a breakthrough to many areas including soft robotics, prosthetics, and healthcare for the benefit of humankind. Therefore, it is a worthy attempt to work on artificial muscle designs to aid them in applications. This paper presents the effect of fibre arrangement within a material structure for force and stroke generation. A method of fabrication, characterisation of actuating textiles was presented with experimental results. Most importantly, a modelling was carried out to develop equations to calculate the force and stroke of actuating textiles which has not been reported to date. A reasonable agreement was found between calculated and measured force/stroke curves of both woven and knitted textiles. The woven textile exhibited a force enhancement directly proportional to the number of actuators while retaining the same strain of the single actuator. Nonetheless, the force and strain of knitted textile were highly dependent on the number of wales and courses per unit length. The fabricated knitted textile showed a lesser strain than the single actuator with a force amplification. However, the performance parameters of as fabricated knitted textiles were higher than the fabricated woven textile. Finally a practical applications, process for bulk manufacturing of silicone coated actuators was proposed to enable them in commercialised products and long length production. This study will enable developers to select the fibre architectures and suitable actuators to suit a particular end requirement.

EXCEED is a longitudinal population-based cohort which facilitates investigation of genetic, environmental and lifestyle-related determinants of a broad range of diseases and of multiple morbidity through data collected at baseline and via electronic healthcare record linkage. Recruitment has taken place in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland since 2013 and is ongoing, with 9,840 participants aged 30-69 to date. The population of Leicester is diverse and additional recruitment from the local South Asian community is ongoing. Participants have consented to follow-up for up to 25 years through electronic health records and additional bespoke data collection is planned. Data available includes baseline demographics, anthropometry, spirometry, lifestyle factors (smoking and alcohol use) and longitudinal health information from primary care records, with additional linkage to other EHR datasets planned. Patients have consented to be contacted for recall-by-genotype and recall-by-phenotype sub-studies, providing an important resource for precision medicine research. We welcome requests for collaboration and data access by contacting the study management team via exceed@le.ac.uk.