Electromechanical Modeling of Tapered Ionic Polymer Metal Composites Transducers

Publication date: Available online 29 April 2016 Source:Perspectives in Science Author(s): Rakesha Chandra Dash, Sujoy Mukherjee Ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs) are relatively new smart materials that exhibit a bidirectional electromechanical coupling. IPMCs have large number of important engineering applications such as micro robotics, biomedical devices, biomimetic robotics etc. This paper presents a comparison between tapered and uniform cantilevered Nafion based IPMCs transducer. Electromechanical modelling is done for the tapered beam. Thickness can be varied according to the requirement of force and deflection. Numerical results pertaining to the force and deflection characteristics of both type IPMCs transducer are obtained. It is shown that the desired amount of force and deflections for tapered IPMCs can be achieved for a given voltage. Different fixed end (t0) and free end (t1) thickness values have been taken to justify the results using MATLAB.

Source: Perspectives in Science - April 28, 2016 Category: Science Source Type: research