Hysteresis Analysis and Control of a Metal-Polymer Hybrid Soft Actuator

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The number of applications of stimulus-responsive polymers is growing at an impressive rate. The motivation of this contribution is to use a commercially available low-budget silver-coated polyamide (PA6) as a thermo-responsive metal-polymer hybrid soft actuator. Polyamide is a hygroscopic polymer; therefore, its mechanical and physical-chemical properties are affected by exposition to humidity or immersion in water. The effect of water absorption content on the PA6 and silver-coated PA6 monofilament properties, such as mass change and resistance, were evaluated. Moreover, the influence of swelling and shrinking effects on the surface morphology, caused by variations of moisture and water immersion, was investigated. Based on these variations, the dynamics of the resistance of the hybrid material were analyzed in the context of the proposed hysteresis model. An identification procedure of the hysteresis is presented along with an approximation of the upper and lower bound based on a constrained least square approach. A switching logic algorithm for this hybrid dynamic system is introduced, which makes it possible to structure the non-linear function in a switching mode. Finally, a non-linear integral sliding manifold is proposed and tested to control the resulting force of the actuator.

Original languageEnglish
Article number508
JournalEnergies
Volume10
Issue number4
Number of pages20
ISSN1996-1073
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 08.04.2017

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support provided to Eduardo E. Feistauer by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq (Brazil) and the financial support of the Helmholtz Association through the Young Investigator Group, "Advanced Polymer Metal Hybrid Structures" (Grant no. VH-NG-626). The authors thank Michel L. da Costa for his support in preparing the simulations.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the authors.

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