The power of polymers in highly twist-plied polymer actuators

Description

Twisted, coiled polymer actuators (TCPAs) present a promising avenue within fiber-based actuators, known for their advantageous traits of high energy density, cost-efficiency, and recyclability. Nevertheless, the feasibility of these actuators for large-scale textile applications faces limitations due to prevailing manufacturing techniques that restrict their length and stability. To address this challenge, our study introduces a novel textile manufacturing approach, founded on the false-twisting principle. This method enables the continuous and swift production of highly twisted polymer monofilaments while also facilitating the integration of functional wires for heating and sensing. The resulting twiststable plies can be mandrel-coiled and annealed, yielding a fresh category of TCPAs characterized by three helical levels from polymer to yarn. Our investigation explores the implications of this supplementary helix level and various factors—twist density, annealing temperature, cooling rate, and chirality—on TCPA contractility. Leveraging the inherent stability of plied yarns, these yarns can be processed using common textile machinery, allowing for the creation of TCPAs with multiple active yarns that come together as contractile artificial muscles via circular braiding. Significant findings highlight the potential of twisted monofilament coils to achieve up to 60% contraction, with heightened twist density correlating with enhanced monofilament TCPA performance. Intriguingly, this trend diverges in plied-yarn TCPAs, where different twists in the monofilaments’ polymer chains and yarns contribute to heightened contractile effectiveness.

Period	01 Dec 2023
Event title	International Textile Conference 2023
Event type	Conference
Location	GermanyShow on map