Multi‐factor influence on the properties of polymer fiber‐based artificial muscles

Abstract

AbstractThermosensitive polymer artificial muscle fiber filaments made of two polymers, cyclic olefin copolymer elastomer (COCe) and polyethylene (PE), have the ability to sense changes generated by the external environment temperature. To optimize the thermosensitive polymer performance, this work investigates the effects of heating temperature, tensile load, strain rate, and mix proportion applied to COCe‐PE polymers on mechanical properties of the resulting fiber‐based muscle. The fiber filament deformation, stress distribution, and penetration characteristics are compared with multifactor coupling parameters utilizing a computational fluid dynamics simulation model. The simulation results show that although increasing the heating temperature has a small effect on the deformation of the fiber filaments, the interpenetration between the materials is better improved with the increase of temperature. Increasing the tensile load and strain rate can effectively increase the fiber filament deformation and improve the interpenetration between materials. The mix proportion of the two materials has a large effect on the plasticity and brittleness of the materials, and the different mix proportion also have a profound effect on the interpenetration. This study could provide some guidelines for the manufacture of artificial muscle fiber filament.