Electroactive polymers (EAP) and their related dielectric elastomers (DE) belong to a very performant and emerging class of functional materials. While being compliant and light-weight, they can be utilized to serve as integrated actuators for soft robotics. By combining EAP with the well-developed class of textile materials and their excellent capability to directly manipulate the local mechanical behavior of structures, compound materials with outstanding properties can be created. In this work a bending structure based on a fiber-elastomer compound is presented. By integrating uniaxially oriented carbon fibers under defined fiber angles in an elastomer matrix, a structure with highly anisotropic bending stiffness is achieved. By attaching dielectric layers with different pre-stretch ratios on both outer sides, an initial elastic stress state is introduced to the structure leading to an anisotropic bending deformation. An attached electrode to the outer side, together with an electrical connection of the textile layers to act as ground electrode, enables the dielectric layers to serve as driving element. Applying a voltage of up to 5000 V leads to an anisotropic bending deflection of up to 1.2 mm at the tips of the structure and 1 mm at the upper edge. Tailoring the geometrical conditions will enable the concept to serve as a gripping mechanism for arbitrarily shaped objects.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.