Design of bio-inspired muscle sarcomere structure using a hybrid hydrogel-IPMC actuator

Abstract

Biological muscle is considered a powerful actuator due to its flexibility, lightweight, and efficiency. The building unit of a muscle, sarcomere, and the study of its energy balance cycle is considered in researches due to its importance to mimic the micro-level muscle structure to improve the artificial muscle performance. In this work, a new design of a linear actuator based on the sarcomere behavior is developed. The design is inspired by studying the four steps adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis cycle, which is the main source of the required energy for sarcomere contraction. A new developed hybrid hydrogel-polymeric material actuator is designed in this paper using a combination between Ionic Polymeric Metallic Composites (IPMC) and hydrogel to behave like the sarcomere. This new actuator proposes an autonomous cycle using the effect oscillatory Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The physical model is proposed, and the mathematical model of the actuator is derived and formulated and identified using MATLAB/Simulink.