New Artificial Muscle Filament Mechanism Based on Fluids Chemical Reaction and Natural Principle

Abstract

In this research, an artificial muscle filament (AMF) as a novel mechanism and small part of the artificial muscle is proposed in which, considering the real natural mechanism and necessity and constructability of industrial manufacturing engineering, AMF with no electric power supply for expansion/contraction provides the conspicuous strong and fast displacement. AMF, inspired by nature, based on the sliding filament theory and combination of advantages of soft and hard materials, employs artificial actin (AA, scissor mechanism) and artificial myosin (AM, soft material). Volume change of AM for displacement of AA is resulted from proposed chemical reaction of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3 (s)) solution with water (l) and acetic acid (CH3COOH (l)) which the main advantages of high power to weight ratio (more than 10 times), mimicking nature and expandable to artificial muscle are obtained in simple module structure. Response speed of AMF can be adjusted by controlling the flow rate and gas output from less than 1 second to desired amount. In this study, by applicable notice on numerical simulation of particle dynamics and experimental tests of AM, a laboratory model of AMF with displacement of 50 mm has been fabricated which for various ranges of flow rate and loading condition is evaluated. The AMF based on the filament theory close to nature, due to overcoming the limitation of conventional artificial muscle and correspondingly advantages of simplicity in fabrication and modularity, low cost and weight, high power and fast response time, the proposed mechanism may be employed especial place for the some future industrial applications.