Fabrication of soft composite flapping actuator

Fabrication of a flapping actuator entails a few possible materials such as shape memory alloy (SMA), ionic polymer-metal composite, and piezo-ceramic material. In this research, SMA wires were embedded into the soft composite actuator as the main source of flapping motion. In order to build the flapping actuator capable of high-frequency motion, a soft composite was fabricated, integrating mainly 3 components: SMA wires as the actuating source, 3D printed scaffolds as a control matrix for the SMA wires which together create intended motion, and PDMS as a binder to hold all the parts as one solid piece. The flapping mechanism is basically induced from the division of the SMA wires into two groups on each side making it possible for the whole actuator to move up and down when electricity is alternatively applied to each set of SMA wires, it resulted in the maximum lifting force of 0.1 N at 4 Hz actuation speed, which opened up the possibility of fabricating flying actuators made of soft composite.