Dielectric elastomer pump for artificial organisms

Bowers, A. E.; Rossiter, Jonathan; Walters, Peter; Ieropoulos, Ioannis

doi:10.1117/12.880440

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Detailed calculations show that for all the other three loading methods, the nonspherical deformation of the dielectric elastomer balloon is energetically stable. 17 At last, we would like to add one more comment on the mass-control and voltagecontrol mode. It is well known that under pressure-control mode, snap-through instability in a balloon may happen during its inflation process.…”

Section: Stability Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shape Bifurcation of a Spherical Dielectric Elastomer Balloon Under the Actions of Internal Pressure and Electric Voltage

Liang

Cai

2015

Journal of Applied Mechanics

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Under the actions of internal pressure and electric voltage, a spherical dielectric elastomer balloon usually keeps a sphere during its deformation, which has also been assumed in many previous studies. In this article, using linear perturbation analysis, we demonstrate that a spherical dielectric elastomer balloon may bifurcate to a non-spherical shape under certain electromechanical loading conditions. We also show that with a non-spherical shape, the dielectric elastomer balloon may have highly inhomogeneous electric field and stress/stretch distributions, which can lead to the failure of the system. In addition, we conduct stability analysis of the dielectric elastomer balloon in different equilibrium configurations by evaluating its second variation of free energy under arbitrary perturbations. Our analyses indicate that under pressure-control and voltage-control mode, non-spherical deformation of the dielectric elastomer balloon is energetically unstable. However, under charge-control or ideal gas masscontrol mode, non-spherical deformation of the balloon is energetically stable.

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Section: Stability Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Eqs (16),(17). and(32) or (34) gives a nonlinear algebra equation with single unknown λ0, which corresponds to the critical conditions of bifurcation for the mode of n=0 or n=1.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shape Bifurcation of a Spherical Dielectric Elastomer Balloon Under the Actions of Internal Pressure and Electric Voltage

Liang

Cai

2015

Journal of Applied Mechanics

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“…The actuation technologies that have been exploited so far for peristaltic actuation are dielectric active elastomers (DAEs) [10], [11], [12], magnetic actuators (MAs), shape memory alloys (SMAs) [13], [14] and pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) [15], [16], [17]. Among these, DAEs and MAs are able to achieve high frequencies, up to 10 Hz, but the limited stroke is unable to provide high flow rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioinspired soft bendable peristaltic pump exploiting ballooning for high volume throughput

Costi

Hughes

Iida

2021

2021 20th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR)

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Interest in bioinspired peristaltic pumps has grown in popularity among the scientific community in the last decade thanks to their extreme flexibility and their intrinsic compliance. In this paper, we propose a soft peristaltic pump exploiting ballooning. Our aim is to promote and propel forward the ballooned region by controlling the air pressure between the balloon and an external flexible containment tube. Thanks to this mechanism, it is possible to achieve a peristaltic pumping motion with a simple design and using only one control signal. In this paper, we describe the implementation of the pump and the inlet-pump-outlet system, provide an analytical model to predict the pump performance, and experimentally test the device. Finally, the proposed pump is directly compared with the state-of-the-art. We show that it is possible to achieve high flow rates, up to 4.5 mL s , with only a single control signal and relying on a much simpler design, paving the way for more flexible and easy to manufacture peristaltic pumps.

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“…The use of DE for fluid pumping, however, has not been comprehensively investigated. Previous authors have proposed that DE can be used for fluid pumping in the form of displacement-membrane pulsatile pump (Goulbourne et al, 2004;Pope et al, 2004), peristaltic pump (Lotz et al, 2009;Wu et al, 2012), tube-like DE pumps (Bowers et al, 2011), and buckling DE membrane microfluidic pump (Tavakol et al, 2014). Some of these studies focus on building theories and computational simulations (Goulbourne et al, 2004;Wu et al, 2012) and have been very useful in laying down the foundation of this area of investigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, unlike experimental studies, they lack realistic considerations such as viscoelasticity of the DE material and dynamics of membrane motion, which are required for pumps to function. In the area of macroscopic DE fluid pumps, some past studies performed experiments to demonstrate the feasibility (Bowers et al, 2011;Lotz et al, 2009) but have only succeeded in generating very small flow rates. For example, Lotz et al reported flow rates of 0.36 mL/min in their peristaltic DE pump, while Bowers et al showed flow rates of 40 mL/s in their tube-like DE pump.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental characterization of a dielectric elastomer fluid pump and optimizing performance via composite materials

Banerjee

Foo

et al. 2017

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures

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Dielectric elastomer is a class of soft actuators with exceptionally high strain capabilities and energy density. It is being studied for wide range of various applications and has been hypothesized to be a good material for biomedical blood pumps. We performed experimental characterization of a simple dielectric elastomer fluid pump to test this feasibility. We achieved substantial flow rates (10 mL/s) and actuation pressure (45 mm Hg) and found that dielectric elastomer fluid pump performance can exhibit significant resonance effects, with drastic reduction in performance at non-resonance frequencies. The elastomer, VHB™, a soft acrylic polymer, is frequently used to fabricate dielectric elastomer due to high deformation abilities and dielectric constant but has a well-known shortcoming of high viscoelasticity, which severely limited the dielectric elastomer pumps’ performance except at very low frequencies. In this study, we demonstrated that the introduction of a thin elastic and non-viscous layer to the VHB, such as latex, to form a composite dielectric elastomer could address this limitation. The composite dielectric elastomer pump has an increased resonance frequency, significantly improved performances at frequencies of 0.75–2 Hz, and higher maximum achievable actuation volume, flow rate, actuation pressures, and power output. Remaining challenges of realizing a dielectric elastomer blood pump are discussed.

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Dielectric elastomer pump for artificial organisms

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Shape Bifurcation of a Spherical Dielectric Elastomer Balloon Under the Actions of Internal Pressure and Electric Voltage

Shape Bifurcation of a Spherical Dielectric Elastomer Balloon Under the Actions of Internal Pressure and Electric Voltage

Bioinspired soft bendable peristaltic pump exploiting ballooning for high volume throughput

Experimental characterization of a dielectric elastomer fluid pump and optimizing performance via composite materials

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