Haghiashtiani Ghazaleh, Habtour Ed, Park Sung-Hyun, Gardea Frank, McAlpine Michael C
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, 111 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005, USA.
Extreme Mech Lett. 2018 May;21:1-8. doi: 10.1016/j.eml.2018.02.002. Epub 2018 Feb 23.
Soft robotics is an emerging field enabled by advances in the development of soft materials with properties commensurate to their biological counterparts, for the purpose of reproducing locomotion and other distinctive capabilities of active biological organisms. The development of soft actuators is fundamental to the advancement of soft robots and bio-inspired machines. Among the different material systems incorporated in the fabrication of soft devices, ionic hydrogel-elastomer hybrids have recently attracted vast attention due to their favorable characteristics, including their analogy with human skin. Here, we demonstrate that this hybrid material system can be 3D printed as a soft dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) with a unimorph configuration that is capable of generating high bending motion in response to an applied electrical stimulus. We characterized the device actuation performance via applied (i) ramp-up electrical input, (ii) cyclic electrical loading, and (iii) payload masses. A maximum vertical tip displacement of 9.78 ± 2.52 mm at 5.44 kV was achieved from the tested 3D printed DEAs. Furthermore, the nonlinear actuation behavior of the unimorph DEA was successfully modeled using analytical energetic formulation and a finite element method (FEM).
软体机器人技术是一个新兴领域，它得益于具有与生物材料相当特性的软材料开发进展，旨在重现活动生物有机体的运动及其他独特能力。软致动器的发展是软机器人和仿生机器进步的基础。在用于制造软设备的不同材料系统中，离子水凝胶 - 弹性体复合材料最近因其良好特性，包括与人类皮肤的相似性，而备受关注。在此，我们证明这种复合材料系统可以3D打印成具有单压电片配置的软介电弹性体致动器（DEA），该致动器能够响应施加的电刺激产生高弯曲运动。我们通过施加（i）上升电输入、（ii）循环电负载和（iii）负载质量来表征该设备的致动性能。从测试的3D打印DEA中，在5.44 kV电压下实现了最大垂直尖端位移9.78±2.52 mm。此外，使用解析能量公式和有限元方法（FEM）成功模拟了单压电片DEA的非线性致动行为。
