Bioinspired Silicone-Based Materials for Adjustable Energy Dissipation in Soft Robotics and Electronics

Description

Nature is a clever engineer – creating living systems soft with multilayered protective structures such as bones, skin or fruit peel that can not only sustain high dynamic, but also quasi-static mechanical loads while being built-up by a small range of basic. Taking inspiration from biological tissues we present simple approaches to damping structures with adjustable stiffness based on novel silicone elastomers and their foams. Silicone elastomers as rubbers are inherently dissipative, however it is challenging to achieve graded elastic moduli within one continuous structure. We therefore created a polyimide-polydimethylsiloxane (PI-PDMS) material mimicking the mechanical properties of the beak of the Humbold squid. The squid beak bridges a wide range of mechanical properties allowing to seamlessly connect the hard beak for cracking open mussels with the soft body of the squid. In analogy, we cover a wide range of mechanical properties by tuning the amounts of the chemical components. To demonstrate the versatility of graded structures made from PI-PDMS, we realized stretchable conductors, reducing principle strain at weak interfaces as well as simple dielectric elastomer actuators. In aaddition, we designed open-pore silicone foams filled with carbon black mimicking the spongy structures of citrus fruit peel. Citrus fruit peel and in particular the spongy foam called albedo is a perfectly tailored biological damping structure. It protects the citrus fruit from splitting open upon its fall from the tree and thus ensures seed distribution. We created foams inspired by citrus fruit albedo and combined them with a peel-like circular pneumatic actuator to demonstrate adjustable energy dissipation as well as sensing upon impact. Material characterzation and proof-of-concept demonstrators are shown.

Period	04 Dec 2024
Event title	unbekannt/unknown
Event type	Conference
Location	United StatesShow on map