Modeling And Principles Of Ionic Polymer Metal Composite Electroactive Polymers As Actuators For Position Reconfigurable Devices

The present work is in the field of functional materials known as electroactive polymers. Electroactive polymers work as a system, enhancing the use of electrical energy to produce displacements and possible mechanical work. An ionic polymer-metal composite is one type of materials. The use of ionic polymer-metal composite actuators is currently a field in development with several areas to be fulfilled by researchers. The objective of this investigation is to develop a constitutive model of the bending deformation of an electroactive ionic polymer-metal composite strip as a response to an electrical input and the ion contents of the material. The constitutive model uses an approach of phase transformation to describe the changes in the cross section of an ionic polymer-metal composite, while modeling the deformations as a bending beam system. For the solution of the constitutive model, the composite material is prepared and characterized. The information about deformation in terms of potential difference, frequency and ionic specie content is gathered through an experimental analysis. The results of this analysis are used to find the parameters in the proposed model. The constitutive model may be applied then to as an engineering tool to propose the design and simulation for a reconfigurable system that uses the IPMC strip with the control variables needed for its repositioning of a device.