Light-powered self-excited motion of a liquid crystal elastomer rotator

Abstract

Self-excited motions have the advantages of directly harvesting energy from the environment, autonomy, and portability of the equipment, and consequently, the development of a wealth of new self-excited motion modes can greatly expand the application of active machines. In this paper, a rotator capable of self-excited movement is proposed, which consists of a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) bar and a regular bar with an axle. Based on the dynamic LCE model, through theoretical modeling and numerical calculation, it is found that the LCE rotator has three motion modes, namely static mode, oscillation mode and rotation mode. The detailed dynamical process reveals the mechanism of self-excited oscillation and rotation. In this paper, the effects of parameters such as light intensity, damping coefficient, dimensionless gravitational acceleration, length ratio, illumination region and initial angular velocity on the self-excited oscillation and rotation are further studied systematically, and the corresponding limit cycles are given by various cases. The results show that the light intensity, damping coefficient and length ratio have important influence on the motion mode, while the initial angular velocity does not affect the motion mode. The influence of various parameters including light intensity and illumination region on the amplitude and frequency of self-excited oscillation is also studied. It is found that the amplitude mainly depends on light intensity and damping. This study can deepen people's understanding of non-equilibrium self-excited motions and provide promising applications in the fields of energy harvest, power generation, monitoring, soft robotics, medical devices and micro–nano-devices.