Design of dielectric elastomer grippers using Bezier curves

• DOI: 10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2020.104216
• Publication Date: 2020-12-17T22:15:34Z
• Authors: Nianfeng Wang; Bicheng Chen; Hao Guo; Chaoyu Cui; Xianmin Zhang
• Keywords: 0203 mechanical engineering; 02 engineering and technology

Abstract Dielectric elastomer (DE) grippers have attracted much attention in safety applications due to their intrinsic compliance, large deformation and high response speed. The performances of DE grippers can be influenced by the design of both the electrode patterns on the DE film and the film supporting frame. This paper presents a design scheme using Bezier curves for topology optimization of both electrode patterns and frame structures. Two kinds of DE grippers are designed to maximize the output displacements. Thereafter, the optimized DE grippers are fabricated and tested. The agreement between experiments and simulations is observed, which shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.