Senior Design Group Reimagines Kinesiology Tape

Over the course of their senior year, students majoring in textile engineering (TE) or textile technology (TT) trade in classrooms for labs and lectures for meetings with industry professionals. 

The reason for this upgrade? Senior Design at the Wilson College of Textiles. In this capstone course, groups of students are paired with sponsors like Under Armour, DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, and P&G to complete a project with real-world implications. 

After two semesters’ worth of researching, prototyping and testing, teams present their product or process to the public during Design Day. 

In the most recently completed Senior Design course, Jordan Everett (B.S. TT), Fatemeh Heydari (B.S. TE) and Devon Poulin (B.S. TE) made a tangible impact on the world of medical textiles. They were challenged to create a garment that would fill the role of kinesiology tape (K-tape). 

“K-tape is single use, so you can only use it one time, for a couple of days at a time. So we wanted to fix that sustainability issue,” Poulin explains. 

Their sponsor, Lycra, develops many of the yarns and fibers commonly used in activewear, swimwear and denim. Throughout the project, they met regularly with a company mentor, and they even had the opportunity to visit Lycra’s headquarters in Delaware. 

“The point of contact for our sponsor company is a Wilson College alum, so she’s been through the same thing and she understands the challenges that come with Senior Design,” Heydari says.

Watch the video at the top of this story or keep reading to learn more about what they developed and what they learned in the process.

Why were you interested in this project? 

DP: I have always been interested in medical textiles, and this was the closest I could get to a performance medical textile project. Both of my parents are physical therapists, so I’ve always just been interested in the activewear field. 

FH: I’m majoring in textile engineering and biomedical engineering, so I had to choose a project that would count for my Senior Design credit in both majors. And I’m also just really interested in medical textiles, which is why I chose to double major. 

JE: I had actually torn both my ACLs in high school, so that led me to become interested in working on K-tape. I’m also really interested in the activewear and sportswear field, and I thought this would apply to that.

What solution did you reach and how did you get there? 

FH: Our final product is a compressive knee sleeve that follows the pattern of where you would apply K-tape on the body. 

We created a proof of concept that the sponsor is considering using in other products as well, but we also helped them out with a lot of testing in the process.

DP: Lycra gave us their thermally-activated yarn to use in our prototypes. It works by making certain parts of the garment more rigid than others when heat is applied. So those areas that are typically covered by K-tape will be rigid and more compressive, and then the other areas are more breathable, allowing you to move, because it’s an activewear garment and used by athletes.

JE: The biggest thing we had to work on is that K-tape is a woven fabric, but our sponsor wanted us to develop a prototype made of knit fabric. So we definitely took a lot of time with researching knitting properties and did a lot of prototyping in our Knitting Lab to determine which knit structure would work best. 

Then, we had to do washability testing to make sure the garment would last through lots of washes. Determining elastic recovery was also a big part of our project, because we wanted to make sure that if the knee sleeves expands, it would be able to come back to its original shape. 

What was your favorite part of the process?

DP: My favorite part was just using everything we’ve learned so far in our majors. Being hands-on is just a completely different experience than learning from a textbook or in a typical class. 

FH: And I think also that because it makes you actually apply the things you’ve learned in class, it makes you more familiar with what industry would be like. Because of Senior Design, I have something to talk about with employers. There are a lot of concepts or processes I can tell them I’m familiar with because I’ve used them in Senior Design.

JE: Seeing everything we worked on come to fruition. That just made, I mean, my heart feel good, because I was like, this isn’t a waste, like, we actually know what we’re doing! 

Where are they now?

Devon Poulin is an engineer at Poly-Med and Jordan Everett is a material sourcing specialist for Columbia Sportswear. Fatemeh Heydari, who graduates this December, is planning to apply to graduate school.