Investigation into the output force tremor characteristics of bionic artificial muscle based on sodium alginate

Abstract

Bionic artificial muscle(BAM) was constantly picking up the research boom of scientists around the world. Under the action of electric field, it relied on the reversible deintercalation process of ions at the electrode interface to realize the conversion of electrical energy and mechanical energy. However, our recent investigations found that the output force performance of the the BAM had a periodic tremor during exercise. This tremor behavior reduced the efficiency of the driver to a certain extent, leading to unstable performance in the process of its operation, which brought many difficulties for its application in the project. Focused on this issue, in this paper, the tremor characteristics of the BAM and its inhibition methods were studied. As a result, we found that calcium chloride crosslinking affected its tremor characteristics by changing the size and shape of the inner grid structure of the driving layer. The crosslinking grid with different sizes and shapes made a large difference in the mechanical properties and the ion channelsof the drive layer. The ideal crosslinking ratio was 0.06%, which not only greatly improved the output force of the BAM, but also suppresses the occurrence of tremor effectively.