A three-heating element design with a temperature control and its size optimization for shape memory polymer composite hinges

Abstract

Our previous study presented a shape memory polymer composite (SMPC) hinge and successfully tested it at a low temperature of −10°C using commercial polyimide-film heating elements and a one-heating element design. The employment of the one-heating element design, however, revealed an unexpected drawback which influenced the deployment performance of the SMPC hinge. In this study, our goal was to define and address the drawback, and then to improve the performance. The result was to create a three-heating element design of the SMPC hinge along with a Proportional Integral Derivative temperature control. The superiority of the three-heating element design was proved by an increased number of bending-deployment cycles at −10°C. Nonetheless, the use of commercial heating . In this sense, we proposed and fabricated in-house polyimide-film heating elements, which consisted of an Fe-Chrome heating element wire No. 2 and two insulating polyimide films placed up and down, with different smaller sizes. Deployment tests with handmade heating elements at room temperature were conducted to determine the optimum heating element size, for which the successful deployment of the SMPC hinge was retained.