DEAP Actuator Composed of a Soft Pneumatic Spring Bias with Pressure Signal Sensing

Jakub Bernat and Jakub Kołota
Additional contact information
Jakub Bernat: Faculty of Control, Robotics and Electrical Engineering, Poznan University of Technology, 60-965 Poznań, Poland
Jakub Kołota: Faculty of Control, Robotics and Electrical Engineering, Poznan University of Technology, 60-965 Poznań, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Dielectric electroactive actuators are novel and significant smart actuators. The crucial aspect of construction of these devices is the bias mechanism. The current literature presents three main types of biases used in the construction of the DEAP actuators. In these solutions, the bias is caused by the action of a spring, a force of a permanent magnet or an applied mass. The purpose of this article is to present a novel type of DEAP bias mechanism using soft pneumatic spring. In contrast to the solutions presented so far, the soft pneumatic spring has been equipped with a sensor that measures the variable pressure of its inner chamber. We performed the modeling process of a soft pneumatic spring with the finite element method to predict its mechanical behavior. Furthermore, a prototype of the soft spring was molded and used to construct a dielectric electroactive polymer actuator. The principle of operation has been confirmed by the experiments with measurement of static and dynamics characteristics. The presented device can be used to control systems with an additional pressure-sensing feedback.

Keywords: DEAP actuator; dielectric elastomer actuator; soft pneumatic spring; FEM model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/4/1189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/4/1189/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:4:p:1189-:d:504082

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().