Abstract
Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are able to undergo large deformation in response to external electric stimuli and have been widely used to drive soft robotic systems, due to their advantageous attributes comparable to biological muscles. However, due to their isotropic material properties, it has been challenging to generate programmable actuation, e.g., along a predefined direction. In this paper, we provide an innovative solution to this problem by harnessing honeycomb metastructures to program the mechanical behavior of dielectric elastomers. The honeycomb metastructures not only provide mechanical prestretches for DEAs but, more importantly, transfer the areal expansion of DEAs into directional deformation, by virtue of the inherent anisotropy. To achieve uniaxial actuation and maximize its magnitude, we develop a finite element analysis model and study how the prestretch ratios and the honeycomb structuring tailor the voltage-induced deformation. We also provide an easy-to-implement and scalable fabrication solution by directly printing honeycomb lattices made of thermoplastic polyurethane on dielectric membranes with natural bonding. The preliminary experiments demonstrate that our designed DEA is able to undergo unidirectional motion, with the nominal strain reaching up to 15.8%. Our work represents an initial step to program deformation of DEAs with metastructures.
Highlights
Soft robotics, an emerging multidisciplinary field, has been receiving increasing attention in the past decade, due to the flexibility and adaptability offered by soft materials to interact with unstructured environments [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Its actuation principle is as follows: when an electric field is applied to a dielectric elastomer (DE) membrane, the Maxwell stress will be induced to squeeze the membrane in thickness and lead the membrane to expand in area
We propose a novel dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) with metastructures built-in that achieves a directional actuation strain of 15.8%
Summary
An emerging multidisciplinary field, has been receiving increasing attention in the past decade, due to the flexibility and adaptability offered by soft materials to interact with unstructured environments [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Typically made of compliant materials that are responsive to external physical stimuli, play a key role in enabling the functionalities of soft robots. Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are a promising alternative because of their advantages such as fast response, high energy density and low cost [14,15,16,17,18]. The simplicity of DEAs in terms of the structure and working principle permits direct energy transformation between electric energy and mechanical energy with high efficiency and large frequency bandwidth. With these distinguished properties, various soft DEA-based machines and robots have been developed, ranging
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