Modeling and Optimal Control of Curvatures in IPMC's

Abstract

There has been a growing number of research activities in the area of using smart materials in day to day lives because of their ability to serve both as sensors and actuators. Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMCs) are one of such materials which have been extensively studied in the past few decades to not only understand its working principles but to also model and control their curvature. The problem of building an electromechanical model in order to explain the functioning of IPMCs under favorable and unfavorable conditions is still unsolved. This work proposes a control oriented electromechanical model for induced bending curvature in the IPMC material based on the empirical data received on Nafion based IPMC specimen. This model is further utilized to formulate a control oriented dynamic model from which an Optimal Control System was suggested for the IPMC actuator and supported by experimental results on the tip displacement