A Method to Improve the Performance of Dielectric Elastomer Actuator and Its Application for Valve Devices

• Main Authors: Jhong,You-Yuan, 鍾侑原
• Other Authors: Fu,Chien-Chung
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/72904457675780840957

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 動力機械工程學系 === 95 === Robots can be a substitute for human being to execute very difficult or extremely dangerous missions. Efficiency of production can be improved and injury of human body can be avoided by the participation of robots. As a result, robots are going to play an important role in fields of technical industry, civil industry, and defense industry, etc. The agitation to the research of electroactive polymer material arises from the great potential of robotic industry to be the star industry in the future. Dielectric elastomer is one among the electroactive polymers. Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) are emerging sort of actuators relative to those made from piezoelectric ceramic and shape memory alloy, which can generate large actuation force(>1N), strain(up to 300% in area), and fast response(<100ms) to electrical stimuli. The attractive characteristics of DEAs offer numerous possibilities for the application of bio-mimetic robots since they can substitute traditional mechanical devices such as motors and gears, etc., which are often heavy and lumpish. Robots made from DEAs will be able to handle more complex situation since they are lighter, more flexible, and have better mobility. However, the characteristics of DEAs have not been well understood till now, more works are required to be done to approach practical applications. In this study, antagonistically-actuated DEAs are fabricated by using VHB4910 tape from 3M Company to be the dielectric elastomer. We adopt the configuration of DEAs: Universal Muscle Actuator, that was first proposed by Heim[11]. At the initial stage we fabricated the UMA, and then experimental investigation was conducted. According to the experimental results, we discovered that creeping behavior that intrinsically exists in VHB4910 would cause many unwanted effects to the actuation displacement and the moving mode of DEAs. The motivation of this study is to be aimed at the improvement of the performance of DEAs that is lowered down by the creeping behavior. We propose a solution to stabilize the actuation displacement and make the moving mode of DEAs more regular. Finally we design an antagonistically-DEAs-driven valve devices that can perform on/off and proportional output functions. The proposed solution is then used to improve the performance of the valve devices.