Research On Actuation Technology Of Micro Flapping Wing Based On Artificial Muscles

With development of new energy, smart materials and MEMS in recent years, more and more people pay attention to micro air vehicle. IPMC is a new electro-active polymer, due to the properties of low driving voltage, large deformation, flexibility and light, it is widely used in bionic micro-driving field. Compared with traditional driving mechanism, IPMC is light weight, suitable for miniaturization and without transmission mechanism, will be widely used in micro-driving field. In this paper, a gradient IPMC is fabricated to improve its performance, patterned electrode methods is used to achieve a three dimensional motion, and study the flapping force of Micro flapping actuator. Which help IPMC used in application of micro flapping actuator.This paper summarizes the electroless plating process to fabricate IPMC with platinum electrode. To test the performance of IPMC, the system which can measure displacement of deformation and output force is set up. The Nafion membrane is cast to fabricate the gradient IPMC, three gradient IPMCs are made for performance test. The result shows the gradient IPMC can improve performance in both displacement and output.Patterned electrode IPMC can achieve three dimensional twisting motions. In this paper mask tape is pasted on Nafion membrane, then, get the patterned IPMC by the electroless plating process. How the stiffness of Nafion and the hydrated cations between the electrode influence the twist angle of IPMC is studied.The IPMC pasted by two small IPMCs and patterned IPMC are made to study the relationship between twist angle and electrode spacing. The result shows that with the electrode spacing increase, IPMC has better deformability and can obtain larger twist angle. In addition, patterned electrode IPMC has a better deformability than the IPMC which pasted by two IPMCs.The flapping force of IPMC flapping actuator also studied in this paper. Two IPMC flapping actuator with different wing and two IPMC flapping actuator with two patterned electrode IPMCs are designed and tested. The experiment results show that the flapping force under driving voltage with resonance frequency is the largest, and the force variation has a good consistency with driving waveform. Air resistance has a great impact on IPMC flapping actuator. The size of electrode has a great impact on flapping force of IPMC flapping actuator with patterned IPMC.