Rubber Muscle Actuator used to power the associated morphing wing

These rubber muscle actuators were also fabricated by students at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, in the Mechanical Engineering Department. These actuators have a nominal diameter of 0.5 inches, have an actuator length of about 6 inches, and produce about 250 lbs each, at 40 psi. They have very high actuation force to weight ratios. These actuators will produce about 32 times the force that a typical pneumatic cylinder will, with the same diameter, because they expand radially.

Here is a good technical article describing these actuators:
Peel, L.D., Jessie, N. Processing and Performance Characteristics of Braided vs Filament Wound Rubber Muscle Actuators, SAMPE 2009, Baltimore, May 2009

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• morphing wing
• mckibben actuator
• pneumatic soft actuator
• rubber muscle actuator
• artificial muscle.

[frenchie310]

would the volume of fluid required to adjust a 1:1 scale foil profile weigh more than the mechanical systems currently employed?

I like this though, what are your recent advances?

[potatopeel2]

@frenchie310 I guess that would depend on what fluid is used. Right now we are using air, which is light, but hydraulic fluid would greatly increase actuator stiffness, and could easily go to much higher pressures. It's too early to say which would be lighter, but we would hope that a wing which has inherent morphing capability and actuators built into it's structure should be lighter and produce better performance.

[applesweeter]

Dear All,

I have some question about psychology:

(1) Why do we love flying?

(2) Why do we enjoy to design and to build new innovative aeroplanes?

(3) Why do we like to build morphing wings similar to the birds' wings?

(4) What does motivate us to build morphing aeroplanes smiliar to flying birds in the natural environment?

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for your creative ideas and brainstorm!!! :)