With the aim of discovering, designing and developing a novel actuator, existing technologies are broken down into components. These are the material or phenomena that provide mechanical power, the type of stimulus required to "excite" the technology and the geometrical arrangement, or configuration of the technology to manifest as an actuator. To date, a number of attempts have been made to classify and compare actuators. Existing comparisons typically use active material performance as a source for actuator data, even though a material alone is not active. A stimulus generation must be present for an active material to be used as an actuator and the addition of local stimulus generation can severely affect the performance of an actuator. Little or no attempt to classify different actuation technologies and configurations with consideration of the nature and provision of stimulus has been made. By classification of stimulus and actuator configuration, many further research areas are identified. The structured actuator categorisation along with a fundamental view of the requirements of an actuator forms the basis of an engineering biased selection strategy.

Date Published: 10 April 2008
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 6927, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2008, 692728 (10 April 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.775426

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6927:
Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2008
Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Editor(s)