Development of efficient soft actuators based on simple structures coupling with strain mismatch

Abstract

Soft robotics, a recently popularized topic, is touched upon. It outlines diverse soft materials and their properties for the soft actuator. The primary objective of this dissertation is to identify the characteristics of soft material in a novel way through studying the relationship between strain and angle during tension-buckling. There are quite a few of existing papers on buckling that have already been published previously, but they concentrate to analyse the relationship among stress and strain on buckling it develops by compression or tension. Angle, however, is a key consequence of tension buckled. The tension machine utilized throughout the current study project has been constructed for determining the deformation degree resulting from strained a rectangular sheet while applying tensile stress in the Y-direction. There are two sets of test specimens with varied thicknesses. Each set of PVC testing samples are created in six groups with varying lengths and widths. The most significant result about the current investigation is that strain is, for the most part, linearly dependent on angle. Nevertheless, some of the anomalous results have been brought via uncontrollable and unreversible factors, such as gravity and flaws in the test product.