Study Of Flexible Phase-transition Actuators And Its 3D Reconstruction Strain Detection Technique

The flexible phase-transition actuators are made of flexible and stretchable materials and actuated by phase transition process.They have broad application prospects in industry,medicine,biology,biomimetic robotics and other fields.In the thesis,two types of phase-transition actuators have been designed,simulated and fabricated.Also,the structured-light 3D reconstruction technique has been applied to detect the strains of the actuators.The main works in the thesis are arranged as follows.First,the state-of-theart phase-transition actuators are reviewed,and the theory of fluids and hyperelastic bodies are analyzed.Then two structures of phase-transition actuators are proposed,including single-cavity phase-transition actuator and double-cavity-and-microchannel phase-transition actuator.The strain characteristics of the actuator are simulated with Finite Element Analysis(FEA)to provide optimized structural designs of the actuators.Subsequently,the rapid prototyping(RP)technology is demonstrated to fabricate the prototypes.Also,a structured-light 3D reconstruction system is built to precisely measure the strain characteristics of the actuators.Ultimately,the prototypes are actuated,and the strains of the actuators are successfully detected via the 3D reconstruction system.The maximum displacement of 2 mm is obtained for the single-cavity phase-transition actuator,and 1.2 mm for the double-cavity-and-microchannel phase-transition actuator.Value of the strains achieves up to 33% and 30% of the elastic film size,respectively.These two actuators get 1.2 grams and 7 grams in mass,respectively.The output mechanical stresses are up to 0.32 N and 0.18 N,which is equivalent to lifting an object up to 26 times its own.The thesis also offers a precision actuator strain testing method referred as structured-light 3D reconstruction for detection and mathematical calculation of actuators.This demonstrates a more efficient detection with a global depth information of the deflections of the samples under test.It may also provide a feasible analyzing method for subsequent actuator design.