Electroactive Textile Actuators for Breathability Control and Thermal Regulation Devices

Polymers

Rujie Sun¹  Andrew Hinitt²  Tim Helps²  Jianglong Guo²  Chaoqun Xiang²  Jonathan Rossiter²  Majid Taghavi² 

[1] Bristol Composites Institute (ACCIS), University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK;SoftLab, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK;

关键词: breathability;    conductive textile;    dielectric elastomer actuator;    wearable device;   

DOI  :  10.3390/polym11071199

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Smart fabrics offer the potential for a new generation of soft robotics and wearable technologies through the fusion of smart materials, textiles and electrical circuitries. Conductive and stretchable textiles have inherent compliance and low resistance that are suitable for driving artificial muscle actuators and are potentially safer electrode materials for soft actuation technologies. We demonstrate how soft electroactive actuating structures can be designed and fabricated from conducting textiles. We first quantitatively analyse a range of stretchable conductive textiles for dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). We found that conductive-knit textiles are more suitable for unidirectional DEA applications due to the largest difference (150%) in principle strain axes, whereas isotropic textiles are more suited to bidirectional DEA applications due to the smallest (11.1%) principle strain difference. Finally, we demonstrate controllable breathability through a planar e-textile DEA-driven skin and show thermal regulation in a wearable prototype that exploits soft actuation and kirigami.

【 授权许可】

Unknown