Study On Movement Mechanism And Energy Consumption Of Snail Siphon

Soft robot is a new research field based on bionics and multi-discipline.Inspired by aquatic mollusks,researchers have designed various soft robots in recently years.The Siphon of snail is an anatomy structure curved by a part of mantle and with a strong scalability.Its structure and motion mechanism may provide new ideas for researchers to design and optimization soft robots.The scalability and the special structure without skeletal support noticed by relevant scholars as early as the 1960 s.Based on previous researches,this paper will investigate the microstructure,motion mechanism,energy consumption model and surface deformation laws and patterns of snail siphon.The microstructure of the siphon was observed by using cryosection and optical microscope.The whole siphon is a tubular structure curved by the mantle of snail.The inner and outer surfaces of siphon are equipped with ring-shaped folds,which is like a bellows structure.The movement mechanism of siphon is like that of the elephant trunk.The siphon is driven by a special muscular organ,muscular hydrostat,which is composed of muscles in the circumferential,longitudinal,and lateral directions to stretch and bend.And its elastic surface can response these deformation movement of siphon owing to the existence of the fold structure.The process that the snails use the siphon to extend out of screw shell involves the buckling deformation of the siphon surface and the energy consumption.Based on this model,an energy consumption model of the siphon was established,and the influence of the fold distribution law on the energy consumption was analyzed.The distribution law of wrinkles on Pomacea canaliculata,Ruditapes philippinarum,and Panopea abrupta were measured,and the distribution law of wrinkles on mollusk siphon can effectively reduce the energy consumption of movement.A buckling deformation mode based on the spiral equation is proposed by studying the buckling mode of siphon.Compared with the traditionally sinusoidal buckling mode,the spiral buckling mode can fit to the fold waveform of siphon with smaller fitting error.A theoretical model of energy consumption for expansion and contraction under different buckling modes was established.The equation of waveform and energy consumption under different axial deformations were theoretically calculated.The results of sinusoid and Fermat spirals were close under the condition of low shrinkage.In the case of high shrinkage,the energy consumption of Fermat's spiral is significantly lower than the sinusoid,which is more similar to the actual situation.A new siphon buckling mode is proposed based on the spiral equation,and the siphon-inspired bellows tensile experiment is designed to verify the theoretical results of the waveform equations under the spiral buckling mode.Finally,the design idea and flow of the respiration-tube flexible telescopic mechanism are proposed.