Stress Analysis of a Stretchable Electronic Circuit

Nowadays the research in electronic product has developed tremendously in order to offer human comfort in various applications such as medical, fabric and consumer applications. Starting from printed circuit board which is rigid, recent electronic products need to consider flexible and stretchable circuit board as a substrate in order to provide flexibility in product design. This paper presents a study on stress behavior of a stretchable electronic circuit using a plastic material as a substrate and a formulated polymer with Ag fillers as conductive ink. The data from tensile tests were implemented in the finite element simulation using ANSYS to simulate stress behavior of the circuit under mechanical loading. The material model was further used in predicting several design of electric circuit such as a zig-zag and a horseshoe shape. The simulation and the experimental results show good agreement between them.