Chapter 7: Electromechanical Distributed Modeling of Ionic Polymer Metal Composites
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Published:19 Nov 2015
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V. Vunder, A. Punning, and A. Aabloo, in Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMCs)
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The electromechanical bending response of an ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) is caused by migration of ions between different layers of the laminate. There are a lot of studies in which the underlying fundamental processes of IPMC actuators are explained using physics-based white-box modeling. From the engineering aspect, the alternative approach—semi-physical gray-box electromechanical modeling—is more reasonable. It may embody the knowledge on the low-level processes, but also relies on some basic functions, whose parameters are determined from simple measurements. Combining the electrical circuits and mechanical viscoelastic models allows straightforward electromechanical modeling of the IPMC actuators and sensors. The current chapter tries to justify the diversity of the gray-box models, discussing their design principles and evolution from simple lumped models up to of the sophisticated distributed models of IPMCs.