Static and Dynamic Characterization of the Temperature and Humidity Influence on IPMC Actuators

Several models that describe the behavior of ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC)-based actuators can be found in the literature. The response of IPMC transducers as a function of modifying quantities is a matter of interest; however, it has not been investigated. It is reasonable to argue that environmental humidity and temperature represent the main modifying parameters. In fact, humidity changes the behavior of IPMC transducers, working as both sensors and actuators, because it changes the Young modulus of the devices and, hence, their mechanical response. The influence of temperature is suspected, because polymer characteristics are often influenced by this quantity. In a previous paper, the authors proposed a dynamic model and investigated the scaling effect of geometrical parameters, giving evidence of the excellent agreement between estimations that were obtained using the proposed model and corresponding observations. In this paper, the response of IPMC actuators to both temperature and relative humidity is analyzed, giving interesting information that both integrates IPMC models and allows for a better exploitation of IPMCs.