Abstract Hydrogel can swell to many times of its dry volume, resulting in large deformation which is vital for its function. The swelling process is regulated by many physical and chemical mechanisms, and can, to some extent, be fairly described by the poroelasticity theory. Implementation of the poroelastieity theory in the framework of finite element method would aid the design and optimization of hydrogel-based soft devices. Choosing chemical potential and displacement as two field variables, we present the implementation of poroelastieity tailored for hydrogel swelling dynamics, detail the normalization of physical parameters and the treatment of boundary conditions. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and correctness of the proposed strategy.
Soft machines are combinations of hard and soft active materials, thus the coupling and interaction between soft and hard components dictate the performance of soft machines. Structural optimization has been intensively used for design of conventional hard machines, while, to our best knowledge, few attempts have been made towards optimal design of soft machines. Here, we describe the sizing optimization problem of a dielectric elastomer(DE) actuated mechanical amplifier, and achieve the optimal design through combination of a commercial finite element method(FEM) software and an optimization automation software.We then design, fabricate and demonstrate a locomotive soft machine driven by DE actuator with amplified displacement output.The methodology and results present here open the door towards optimal designs of active materials based soft machines.
LIU FanSUN WenJieZHAO XuanLI ChengHaiZHOU JinXiong
