Cao Yang, Dong Jingyan
Edward P Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Soft Matter. 2021 Mar 11;17(9):2577-2586. doi: 10.1039/d0sm02062a.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the research in soft actuators that exhibit complex programmable deformations. Soft electrothermal actuators use electricity as the stimulus to generate heat, and the mismatch between the thermal expansions of the two structural layers causes the actuator to bend. Complex programmable deformations of soft electrothermal actuators are difficult due to the limitations of the conventional fabrication methods. In this article, we report a new approach to fabricate soft electrothermal actuators, in which the resistive heater of the electrothermal actuator is directly printed using electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing. The direct patterning capabilities of EHD printing allow the free-form design of the heater. By changing the design of the heating pattern on the actuator, different heat distributions can be achieved and utilized to realize complex programmable deformations, including uniform bending, customized bending, folding, and twisting. Finite element analysis (FEA) was used to validate the thermal distribution and deformation for different actuator designs. Lastly, several integrated demonstrations are presented, including complex structures obtained from folding, a two-degree-of-freedom soft robotic arm, and soft walkers.
近年来，对展现复杂可编程变形的软致动器的研究兴趣与日俱增。软电热致动器利用电作为刺激来产生热量，两个结构层的热膨胀之间的不匹配导致致动器弯曲。由于传统制造方法的限制，软电热致动器的复杂可编程变形很困难。在本文中，我们报告了一种制造软电热致动器的新方法，其中电热致动器的电阻加热器是使用电流体动力学（EHD）打印直接打印的。EHD打印的直接图案化能力允许对加热器进行自由形式设计。通过改变致动器上加热图案的设计，可以实现并利用不同的热分布来实现复杂的可编程变形，包括均匀弯曲、定制弯曲、折叠和扭转。有限元分析（FEA）用于验证不同致动器设计的热分布和变形。最后，展示了几个集成演示，包括通过折叠获得的复杂结构、两自由度软机器人手臂和软步行器。
