NONLINEAR BUCKLING INSTABILITY OF FLUID MEDIATED SOFT ROBOTIC RINGS

Abstract

Over the past few decades, engineers have been laying the groundwork for a world where robots branch away from industrial settings, and start to work closely together with humans. To this end, soft robots are made from supple materials, and are programmable with actuations that mimic animal and vegetal movement. This project adopted a new method of fluid-mediated soft actuator construction called “bubble casting” to create a series of inflatable ring-shaped samples. These samples were then examined and tested alongside a theoretical mechanical model to investigate the relationship between pressure and unstable nonlinear buckling of each ring. Synchronized visual and pressure data were combined to experimentally extract the critical buckling pressures, which were compared to the proposed model. Additionally, mechanical principals of soft actuators were leveraged in this project to construct a sequentially programmed buckling ring system.