Abstract
This research was conducted to investigate the feasibility of Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) as the actuator for Contractile Water Jet Thruster (CWJT). The thrust that generated from the accelerated volume of ejected fluid depends on the IPMC actuator contraction performance. During this investigation, the variation of contraction frequency and nozzle aperture influence on the body deformation was carried out. The results of the experiments exhibit that the body contraction decreased tremendously from 0.05 Hz to 0.15 Hz. The body contraction has no apparent decrement for more than 0.15 Hz of contraction frequency. Besides, larger nozzle aperture has relatively more body contraction than smaller nozzle aperture. These results show that the fixed actuation force and the contraction frequency have a significant influence on the CWJT body contraction.
Highlights
Contractile Water Jet Thruster (CWJT) is a thruster that inspired from the squid contractile mechanism [1]
The Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) actuators were fixed to the gold plated electrodes and its tip was pasted on the PE film (Figure 1)
The results show that the CWJT body displacement increases as the nozzle aperture became wider
Summary
Contractile Water Jet Thruster (CWJT) is a thruster that inspired from the squid contractile mechanism [1]. IPMC utilizes low voltage and able to work in the water. It has a low actuation force which is between 5 gf to 10 gf, depending on the type of electrode, actuator length and thickness [3, 4]. The result of this study determined the relation between the volume contraction and the actuation frequency as well as the nozzle aperture. The relation between these parameters had been presented in graph form in order to define the most influential parameters on volume contraction. The finding of this research is concluded in the last section
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