Characteristics evaluation of PVC gel actuators

A poly vinyl chloride (PVC) gel actuator shows great potential for use as an artificial muscle because of such positive characteristics as movement in the air, large deformation, and being lightweight. A bending type actuator using PVC gel was studied previously [4]-[6]. We have proposed the structure of a contraction type actuator to construct an artificial muscle, and we have conducted some experiments using the single-layer PVC gel actuator [8]. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of the multi-layer PVC gel actuator experimentally and evaluate its specifications in terms of the composition of PVC gel and the structure of the mesh electrode. The experimental results showed that the contraction rate of the actuator was about 14%, the response rate was 7Hz, and the output force was 4kPa. Also, we found that the stiffness of the actuator increased as the applied dc field increased like human muscle. The characteristics of the PVC gel actuator are shown to be very effective for constructing an artificial muscle.