Research On The Properties Of Inorganic Filler-Enhanced Silicone Rubber For Soft Robots

Soft robotics is an evolution of robotics in which scientists break through the limitations of rigid robot structures and materials to carry out design and research on soft robots inspired by natural organisms.Soft robots consist of soft elastic materials,so the performance of elastic materials will determine the overall performance of soft robots,but the performance of existing elastic soft materials is difficult to meet the requirements of soft robot use.In this paper,we study the effect of three different inorganic fillers on the mechanical properties of silicone rubber for soft robots,and investigate the effect of inorganic filler-silicone rubber composites on the performance of soft pneumatic actuators,the specific work of this paper is as follows:First,the most commonly used Ecoflex0050 silicone rubber for soft robots was studied,and the effect of different ratios of two components of silicone rubber and different temperature heat treatment on the mechanical properties of silicone rubber was discussed with the help of uniaxial tensile test on the material by universal material testing machine.Three inorganic filler-silicone rubber composites were prepared to explore the effects of different shapes of inorganic fillers on the mechanical properties of silicone rubber.The results show that the increase of vinyl can improve the mechanical properties of silicone rubber;the mechanical properties of silicone rubber show a trend of firstly improving and then decreasing with the increase of temperature.The mechanical properties of silicone rubber were significantly improved by the addition of three different shapes of inorganic fillers with suitable addition amounts.Next,Based on the experimental data of uniaxial tensile mechanics,the fitting analysis of six hyperelastic constitutive models for the experimental curve of silicone rubber composites was analyzed from the aspects of curve similarity,goodness of fit and error analysis.Applicability: Among the six constitutive models,the second-order Ogden model shows excellent fitting ability in a large deformation range.Finally,A classical grid-type pneumatic soft actuator was designed,and the actuator was fabricated with inorganic filler-silicone rubber composite material,and the influence of the silicone rubber composite material on the performance of the soft actuator was explored.The experimental results show that compared with the original silicone rubber,the addition of inorganic fillers greatly improves the bending performance,output thrust performance and gripping performance of the soft actuator.In addition,numerical simulations based on the second-order Ogden model parameters were performed using finite elements for soft actuators,and the simulation results were compared with the experimental results.The analytical study in this thesis provides a feasible solution for the performance enhancement of soft robotic materials and provides a practical basis for further research and application.