Suitability of Mozzarella cheese for various products involves the measurement of rheological properties of the cheese related to its meltability. The rheology in this work is determined dynamically with a Rheometrics RDA 700 mechanical spectrometer using 25 mm diameter parallel plates fabricated from aluminum. Bonding the cheese specimen directly to the plates with cyanoacrylate ester adhesive proved the most effective in countering the problem of specimen slip. Viscosity proved sensitive to addition of calcium casenate, following an Arrhenius relationship with temperature. Both elastic and viscous components of the shear modulus increased with a 1% addition but a 2% addition decreased the elastic component below that observed for natural Mozzarella under the same conditions.
Soft material robots offer a number of advantages over traditional rigid robots in applications including humanrobot interaction, rehabilitation and surgery. These robots can navigate around obstacles, elongate, squeeze through narrow openings or be squeezed -and they are considered to be inherently safe. The ability to stiffen compliant soft actuators has been achieved by embedding various mechanisms that are generally decoupled from the actuation principle. Miniaturisation becomes challenging due to space limitations which can in turn result in diminution of stiffening effects. Here, we propose to hydraulically actuate soft manipulators with lowmelting-point material and, at the same time, be able to switch between a soft and stiff state. Instead of allocating an additional stiffening chamber within the soft robot, one chamber only is used for actuation and stiffening. Low Melting Point Alloy is integrated into the actuation chamber of a single-compartment soft robotic manipulator and the interfaced robotic syringe pump. Temperature change is enabled through embedded nichrome wires. Our experimental results show higher stiffness factors, from 9 − 12 opposing the motion of curvature, than those previously found for jamming mechanisms incorporated in separate additional chambers, in the range of 2 − 8 for the same motion.
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