Dielectric elastomer pump for artificial organisms

Bowers, Amy E., Rossiter, Jonathan M., Walters, Peter J. and Ieropoulos, Ioannis A. (2011) Dielectric elastomer pump for artificial organisms. In, Bar-Cohen, Yoseph and Carpi, Federico (eds.) Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011. (Proceedings of SPIE, 7976) SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and<br/>Health Monitoring, 2011, San Diego, California, United States: SPIE (01/04/11 - 10/04/11) SPIE. (doi:10.1117/12.880440).

Abstract

This paper presents a bio-inspired, dielectric elastomer (DE) based tubular pumping unit, developed for eventual use as acomponent of an artificial digestive tract onboard a microbial fuel cell powered robot (EcoBot). The pump effects fluiddisplacement by direct actuation of the tube wall as opposed to excitation by an external body.The actuator consists of a DE tube moulded from silicone, held in a negative pressure chamber, which is used forprestraining the tube. The pump is coupled with custom designed polymeric check valves in order to rectify the fluidflow and assess the performance of the unit. The valves exhibited the necessary low opening pressures required for use with the actuator. The tube’s actuation characteristics were measured both with and without liquid in the system. Based on these data the optimal operating conditions for the pump are discussed. The pump and valve system has achieved flow rates in excess of 40µl/s. This radially contracting/expanding actuator element is the fundamental component of a peristaltic pump. This ‘soft pump’ concept is suitable for biomimetic robotic systems, or for the medical or food industries where hard contact with the delivered substrate may be undesirable. Future work will look at connecting multiple tubes in series in order to achieve peristalsis

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: Ioannis A. Ieropoulos

Download statistics