Soft pneumatic actuator workspace augmentation with synthesis of simplified analytical and numerical subcomponent models

Chamber inflating soft pneumatic actuators (SPA) are widely used for many industrial applications. Despite the increasing popularity of the actuators, few analyses investigating the detailed functionality of the actuator subcomponents and the contribution of their functions to the overall actuator operation are available. Understanding the roles of the actuator’s (sub)components for the overall actuator motion is the fundamental motivation of this work. Consequently, this paper must evaluate the interactions between the actuator’s overall performance and the component-level design parameter variations. To understand the relation, this work builds component-level simplified analytical models and extends them to estimate the actuator motions. With finite element method (FEM) models, the work enhances its analysis of each component and confirms their contribution to the overall motion. Both the newly built analytical and FEM models are thoroughly compared to a series of experiments. Finally, the present work synthesizes the studied design sensitivity of the subcomponent variations and suggests a soft pneumatic actuator design that is believed to provide the maximum workspace.