Giant continuously-tunable actuation of a dielectric elastomer ring actuator

Teh, Ying Shi; Koh, Soo Jin Adrian

doi:10.1016/j.eml.2016.07.002

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…[139][140][141] The advantages of DEAs include large expansion strain over 200%, high bandwidth at tens to hundreds of Hz, and low electrical power consumption. [142][143][144][145] However, it often requires a large actuation voltage over hundreds to thousands of volts to generate high electric fields and a large pre-stretching of DE membranes to avoid electromechanical instabilities. [146] The material nonlinearity, nonlinear electromechanical coupling, and time-dependent viscoelastic behavior makes it challenging to model and control of a viscoelastic DEA.…”

Section: Electroactive Polymersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities

et al. 2022

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Snap‐through bistability is often observed in nature (e.g., fast snapping to closure of Venus flytrap) and the life (e.g., bottle caps and hair clippers). Recently, harnessing bistability and multistability in different structures and soft materials has attracted growing interest for high‐performance soft actuators and soft robots. They have demonstrated broad and unique applications in high‐speed locomotion on land and under water, adaptive sensing and fast grasping, shape reconfiguration, electronics‐free controls with a single input, and logic computation. Here, an overview of integrating bistable and multistable structures with soft actuating materials for diverse soft actuators and soft/flexible robots is given. The mechanics‐guided structural design principles for five categories of basic bistable elements from 1D to 3D (i.e., constrained beams, curved plates, dome shells, compliant mechanisms of linkages with flexible hinges and deformable origami, and balloon structures) are first presented, alongside brief discussions of typical soft actuating materials (i.e., fluidic elastomers and stimuli‐responsive materials such as electro‐, photo‐, thermo‐, magnetic‐, and hydro‐responsive polymers). Following that, integrating these soft materials with each category of bistable elements for soft bistable and multistable actuators and their diverse robotic applications are discussed. To conclude, perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in this emerging field are considered.

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Section: Electroactive Polymersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities

et al. 2022

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“…In the field of DE, one of the main goals is to develop highperformance DEAs. Based on the working principle, various configurations of DEAs are designed for extensive applications, such as planar, [58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] multilayer stacked, [26,27,[67][68][69][70][71] folded, [72,73] rolled, [24,[74][75][76][77][78] diamond, [79][80][81] bending, [82][83][84][85][86] zipping, [87] balloon, [22,23,[88][89][90][91][92][93] cone-shaped, [94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101] hinge, [102...…”

Section: Configurations Of Typical Deasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Planar actuator Linear strain 503% [58] Linear strain 360% [59] Linear strain 230% [60] Linear strain 142% [152] Linear strain 90.6% [63] Linear strain 50% [196] Linear strain %50% [65] Linear strain 38% [184] Linear strain 12% [61] Areal strain 488% [66] Areal strain 230% [197] Multilayer stacked/folded actuator Linear strain 46% Lift a weight of over 2 kg Energy density 12.9 J kg À1 ; %500 cycles [27,67] Linear strain 24% Linear pull force %70 N Energy density 19.8 J kg À1 ; %300 000 cycles [26] Linear strain %15.5% [72] Linear strain %10% Raise a load of 900 g [68] Linear strain %4.6% Nature frequency %31 Hz [69] Linear strain 3.5% Tensile force 10 N [71] Rolled actuator Linear strain %200% [77] Linear strain %70% [78] Linear strain 35.8% [75] Linear strain 25% Blocked force 0.44 N Power density 1.2 kW kg À1 [139] Linear strain 15% [157] Linear strain 15% Energy density: 1.13 J kg À1 ; bandwidth >400 Hz; %600 000 cycles [24] Linear strain 9.75% Blocked force 1 N Energy density 0.275 J kg À1 ; %50 000 cycles [111] Bending angle 90 Lateral force 0.7 N; blocked axial force 15 N [76] Minimum energy structures Angle change 0 -90 [82] Angle change %À70 -80 [84] Displacement change À40-35 mm Per action 0.1386 J [119] Angle change 82.4 Blocked force 143 mN [86] Angle change 0 -52.8 [198] Balloon actuator Areal strain 2200% Electromechanical energy conversion density 1.13 J g À1 [22] Areal strain 1692% [23] Areal strain 1165% [199] Areal strain 400% Force 0.15 N [200] The apical displacement 6.…”

Section: Types Of Deas Actuation Index Referencementioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators and Their Applications in Soft Robots

Guo

Liu

et al. 2021

Advanced Intelligent Systems

166

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Robots play an increasingly important role in industrial production and daily life. Traditional robots are mostly made of hard materials, such as metal and plastic. Although rigidity of the material enables the traditional robot to perform tasks that are difficult for humans, for instance, carrying heavy objects, it also limits its adaptability. In nature, animals and plants are mostly made of soft materials, which make them have very high compliance and realize a variety of unimaginable actions. Similar to natural creatures, soft robots are usually composed of soft stimuli-responsive materials, which make them have good adaptability and compliance, and can achieve large deformation.Triggered by external stimuli, such as electric fields, magnetic fields, heat, and light, these soft stimuli-responsive materials can deform in a specific direction. The soft stimuli-responsive materials commonly used in soft robots include electroactive polymers (EAP), [1][2][3] hydrogels, [4][5][6][7] magnetic materials, [8][9][10] shape memory polymers (SMP), [11][12][13] shape memory alloys (SMA), [14,15] liquid crystal elastomers (LCE), [16][17][18] and so on. In addition, other actuation methods, such as pneumatic inflation and [19] electrostatic, [20,21] are also widely used in soft robots. To have an overview of different actuation methods, their performances with the maximum values are shown in Table 1. Although these maximum values were obtained from different actuators for each actuation method, they still demonstrate the potential upper limit.Dielectric elastomer (DE) is a typical EAP, which can generate significant deformation under the action of an external electric field. Thanks to its characteristics, such as large deformation, [22,23] fast response, [24,25] low elastic modulus, [2] high energy density, [26,27] light weight, [28,29] and low cost, [28] DE has the reputation of artificial muscles and has become one of the most promising materials in soft robots. [30][31][32][33][34] In this Review, we concentrate on the recent progresses of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) and their application in soft robots. In Section 2, we first introduce the working principle of DEAs, followed by the DE materials and compliant electrodes. Then, various DEAs with different designs are introduced. In Section 3, the application of DEAs in soft robots is divided into seven categories. Some recent highlights are described and discussed in detail, especially those with biological inspiration. We summarize some of the challenges in Section 4 and this is followed with the conclusion in Section 5. Dielectric Elastomer Actuators Working PrincipleGenerally, the structure of a DEA is similar to a sandwich, consisting of a DE membrane, where both surfaces are coated with compliant electrodes, as shown in Figure 1a. Once the compliant electrodes are subjected to voltage, an electric field will be generated in the membrane. The induced Maxwell stress causes the membrane to expand its area and contract its thickness. Based on the mechanism of ...

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“…The inhomogeneous deformation is [59]; c bundle of SMA wires [32]; d SMA spring robot [31]; e robotic hand driven by SMA wires [34]; f high-speed microscale SMA actuators [35]; g Nitinol hydraulic bellow actuator [36]; h biocompatible shape memory polymer actuators [53]; i arm-like electrothermal actuator [55] one of the main causes of actuating instability. Teh et al [9] developed a cylindrical actuator, which significantly enlarged the electrically induced linear strains to 200%. Lu et al [10] conducted the theoretical analysis of cylindrical actuator and found out how the height-to-radius ratio of the tube and loading conditions affected the actuation.…”

Section: Dielectric Elastomer Linear Actuatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1. Soft linear actuators driven by electro-active material (DE): a arm wrestling robot [6]; b bio-inspired wing flappers [8]; c DE tensile actuators with stacked laminates [14]; d DE ring actuator [9]; e self-healing actuator [15]; f loudspeaker actuator [12] development of smart materials has played an important role in the manufacture of artificial muscle. Smart materials refer to a kind of materials that produce functional response under external stimuli such as electricity, heat, and catalyst.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Soft Linear Actuator and the Design of a Dielectric Elastomer Linear Actuator

Cao

Zhang

et al. 2019

Acta Mech. Solida Sin.

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Natural muscle provides excellent motilities for animals. As the basic unit of the muscle system, the skeletal muscle fibers function as a soft linear actuator. Inspired by the muscle fibers, researchers have developed various soft active devices with linear actuation. This paper reviews several soft linear actuators, such as the dielectric elastomer, thermal responsive hydrogels, pneumatic artificial muscle, and conducting polymers. The actuation mechanisms and performances of these soft linear actuators are summarized. Based on the dielectric elastomer, we propose a design of a hybrid system with linear actuation, driven by both the electric motor and dielectric elastomer cone. The electromechanical behaviors of the dielectric elastomer cone have been investigated in both experiment and finite element analysis. This work may guide the further design of soft actuators and robots.

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Giant continuously-tunable actuation of a dielectric elastomer ring actuator

Cited by 19 publications

References 24 publications

Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities

Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities

Review of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators and Their Applications in Soft Robots

Review of Soft Linear Actuator and the Design of a Dielectric Elastomer Linear Actuator

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