Abstract
Twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) can generate large stroke and output high power density, making it a promising artificial muscle. Thermally induced muscles fabricated from nylon or other polymer fibers can be used in robotic, biomedical devices, and energy-harvesting equipment. While fibers with different shapes and materials have different optimal process parameters. Understanding mechanisms of TCP forming and the impact of process parameters is critical to explore stronger, more powerful artificial muscles. In this paper, an elastic-rod-theory-based model was established for capturing the quantitative relationship between tensile actuation and fabrication load. Further experimental results agree with model calculation and TCP muscles used in our research reaches maximum stroke of 52.6%, strain up to 9.8 MPa, and power density of 211.89 J/kg.
Highlights
Soft robots, an emerging supplement for rigid robots, have attracted huge attention from both academia and industry
Larger torque or larger twist number is needed to curl the cable into a helical-shape with a tensile fabrication load
The relationship between maximum twist number and fabrication load is derived based on elastic rod firstly, the relationship between maximum twist number and fabrication load is derived based on theory
Summary
An emerging supplement for rigid robots, have attracted huge attention from both academia and industry. The development of soft robots is rapidly evolving with complimentary activities covering architecture design, assembling, modeling, and control [1,2]. Most of those soft robots are driven by soft actuators or known as artificial muscles which can serve torsion, tensile, or bending motion pneumatically, thermally, electrically, or by other methods [3,4,5,6,7]. Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) have large actuation force, high power density, and fast respond speed [8,9]. PAMs can exhibit high strain up to 90%, generating peak power densities over 2 kW/kg [10]. Hydrogels can achieve a large strain (up to approximate to 40%), and deliver a remarkable volumetric power density of 30.77 mW/cm3 [15]
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