Research On The Distributed Equivalent Circuit For Coupled Electro-mechanical Analysis Of IPMC

Ionic Polymer Metal Composite(IPMC)is a new kind of electric active smart material which has large deformation,low density and strong strain capacity.It can be used as both actuators and sensors and can be widely applied in bionics,medical treatment,aeronautics and astronautics.This thesis studied the preparation,the equivalent circuit and coupled electro-mechanical analysis of IPMC.The main works and results are as follows:The preparation technology of IPMC: Solution casting method was used to prepare ion exchange membranes with no impurity.Temperature control method was used to prepare Pt-IPMC.The samples were characterized to obtain the microscopic morphology.Through actuating test,voltages of different amplitude,frequency and form were applied to the samples to explore the deformation of IPMC.Equivalent electrical model of IPMC: A distributed RC line was established according to the actuating mechanism of Pt-IPMC.To study the size effect of IPMC,a testing system was set up to measure the electrical parameters of different sizes of IPMC,using basic electrical principles.Plugging the electrical parameters into the electrical simulation software called PSIM,the accuracy of the measured electrical parameters can be estimated by comparing the error margins between the experiment and the simulation.The result showed that the electrical parameters were affected by the size of IPMC: The internal electrical parameters will be decreased with the increase of the length when the widths of IPMC were the same and the error margin between experiment and simulation could be reduced to 10% if considering the size effect of IPMC.Coupled electro-mechanical relationship: Considering the non-uniform deformation of IPMC,the maximum deflection curves of IPMC were studied in this research.The linear coupling relationship between the bending curvature and distributed voltage was eatablished through deriving the geometric expression and distributed voltage expression.The coupled electro-mechanical model was verified using the Pt-IPMC and Ag-IPMC.The result showed that the coupled electro-mechanical model could predict the deflection curves of IPMC very well with certain accuracy and applicability.In this article,the research on preparation method provided a helpful basis for molding technology of IPMC.The research on equivalent electrical model and the coupled electro-mechanical relationship could do help to further research of IPMC.