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Stretchable artificial muscles from coiled polymer fibers

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Abstract

Soft robots are being developed to mimic the movement of biological organisms and as wearable garments to assist human movement in rehabilitation, training, and tasks encountered in functional daily living. Stretchable artificial muscles are well suited as the active mechanical element in soft wearable robotics, and here the performance of highly stretchable and compliant polymer coil muscles are described and analyzed. The force and displacements generated by a given stimulus are shown to be determined by the external loading conditions and the main material properties of free stroke and stiffness. Spring mechanics and a model based on a single helix are used to evaluate both the coil stiffness and the mechanism of coil actuation. The latter is directly coupled to a torsional actuation in the twisted fiber that forms the coil. The single helix model illustrates how fiber volume changes generate a partial fiber untwist, and spring mechanics shows how this fiber untwist generates large tensile strokes and high gravimetric work outputs in the polymer coil muscles. These analyses highlight possible as yet unexplored means for further enhancing the performance of these systems.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks Dharshika Kongahage and Dr. Sina Naficy for providing the experimental data of Figures 4 and 5. The author also thanks Professors Ray Baughman (University of Texas at Dallas), John D.W. Madden (University of British Columbia), and Seon Jeong Kim (Hanyang University) for valuable discussions. Financial support for this work was provided by the Australian Research Council (DP 110101073).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, School of Mechanical, Materials and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Geoffrey M. Spinks

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  1. Geoffrey M. Spinks
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Correspondence to Geoffrey M. Spinks.

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This paper has been selected as an Invited Feature Paper.

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Spinks, G.M. Stretchable artificial muscles from coiled polymer fibers. Journal of Materials Research 31, 2917–2927 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.316

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