Effect of bending stiffness of the electroactive polymer element on the performance of a hybrid actuator system (HYBAS)

Tian-Bing Xu; Ji Su; Xiaoning Jiang; Paul W. Rehrig; Shujun Zhang; Thomas R. Shrout; Qiming Zhang

doi:10.1117/12.661186

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22 March 2006 Effect of bending stiffness of the electroactive polymer element on the performance of a hybrid actuator system (HYBAS)

Tian-Bing Xu, Ji Su, Xiaoning Jiang, Paul W. Rehrig, Shujun Zhang, Thomas R. Shrout, Qiming Zhang

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Proceedings Volume 6168, Smart Structures and Materials 2006: Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD); 61682H (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.661186
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2006, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

An electroactive polymer (EAP)-ceramic hybrid actuation system (HYBAS) was developed recently at NASA Langley Research Center. This paper focuses on the effect of the bending stiffness of the EAP component on the performance of a HYBAS, in which the actuation of the EAP element can match the theoretical prediction at various length/thickness ratios for a constant elastic modulus of the EAP component. The effects on the bending stiffness of the elastic modulus and length/thickness ratio of the EAP component were studied. A critical bending stiffness to keep the actuation of the EAP element suitable for a rigid beam theory-based modeling was found for electron irradiated P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer. For example, the agreement of experimental data and theoretical modeling for a HYBAS with the length/thickness ratio of EAP element at 375 times is demonstrated. However, the beam based theoretical modeling becomes invalid (i.e., the profile of the HYBAS movement does not follow the prediction of theoretical modeling) when the bending stiffness is lower than a critical value.

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Tian-Bing Xu, Ji Su, Xiaoning Jiang, Paul W. Rehrig, Shujun Zhang, Thomas R. Shrout, and Qiming Zhang "Effect of bending stiffness of the electroactive polymer element on the performance of a hybrid actuator system (HYBAS)", Proc. SPIE 6168, Smart Structures and Materials 2006: Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD), 61682H (22 March 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.661186

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