Related papers: Performance of soft dielectric laminated composite…
When the electrically thin unit cell of a laminated composite material is made of two bianisotropic sheets whose constitutive properties in the thickness direction are decoupled from the constitutive properties in the interfacial planes,…
Distributed Manipulator Systems, composed of arrays of robotic actuators necessitate dense actuator arrays to effectively manipulate small objects. This paper presents a system composed of modular 3-DoF robotic tiles interconnected by a…
Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…
We use a continuous mesoscopic model to address the yielding properties of plastic composites, formed by a host material and inclusions with different elastic and/or plastic properties. We investigate the flow properties of the composed…
Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator arrays have been suggested as active flow control devices due to the robust electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force generation in variable atmospheric conditions. DBD plasma augmentation schemes…
This paper presents an interaction control algorithm for a dielectric elastomer membrane actuator. The proposed method permits efficient exploitation of the controllable stiffness of the material, allowing to use the membrane as a…
We study spin wave excitations in a three-dimensional nanocomposite magnet of exchange coupled hard (SmCo$_5$) and soft (FeCo) phases. The dipolar interaction splits the spin wave energies into the upper and lower branches of the spin wave…
Amongst the various fascinating types of material behavior featured by magnetic gels and elastomers are magnetostrictive effects. That is, deformations in shape or changes in volume are induced from outside by external magnetic fields.…
In the quest for electrically-driven soft actuators, the focus has shifted away from liquid-gas phase transition, commonly associated with reduced strain rates and actuation delays, in favour of electrostatic and other electrothermal…
Deformation due to embedded fluidic networks is currently studied in the context of soft-actuators and soft-robotics. Expanding on this concept, beams can be designed so that the pressure in the channel-network is created directly from…
Soft actuators offer a safe, adaptable approach to tasks like gentle grasping and dexterous manipulation. Creating accurate models to control such systems however is challenging due to the complex physics of deformable materials. Accurate…
This paper concerns the experimental validation of some mathematical models previously developed by the authors, to predict the static behaviour of microelectrostatic actuators, basically free-clamped microbeams. This layout is currently…
Soft elastic composite materials can serve as actuators when they transform changes in external fields into mechanical deformation. Here, we address the corresponding deformational behavior of magnetic gels and elastomers, consisting of…
Lattice relaxation profoundly reshapes electronic structures in twisted materials. Prevailing treatments, however, typically rely on large-scale density functional theory (DFT), which is computationally costly and mechanistically opaque.…
Anisotropic homogeneous metamaterials that are neither wholly dissipative nor wholly active at a specific frequency are permitted by classical electromagnetic theory. Well-established homogenization formalisms indicate that such a…
Soft robotics is an attractive and rapidly emerging field, in which actuation is coupled with the elastic response of the robot's structure to achieve complex deformation patterns. A crucial challenge is the need for multiple control…
The mechanical properties of metal matrix fiber-reinforced composites depend on many aspects of their structure in a complicated way. In this paper, we propose a \emph{minimalistic} approach to study interface debonding, matrix cracking,…
Switchable adhesives have the potential to improve the manufacturing and recycling of parts and to enable new modes of motility for soft robots. Here, we demonstrate magnetically-switchable adhesion of a two-phase composite to non-magnetic…
Collective actuation in active solids, the spontaneous condensation of the dynamics on a few elastic modes, takes place whenever the deformations of the structure reorient the forces exerted by the active units composing, or embedded in,…
Thin elastic sheets bend easily and, if they are patterned with cuts, can deform in sophisticated ways. Here we show that carefully tuning the location and arrangement of cuts within thin sheets enables the design of mechanical actuators…