Design of multi-stacked Actuator

As mentioned earlier, the performance of the actuator depends considerably on the geometry of the actuator. In this section, we analyze typical geometries such as circular, rectangular and trapezoidal ones, and compare the actuator performance among these geometries. 

The design of the multi-stacked circular actuator is illustrated in Fig. 7.5. The basic unit of the circular actuator is composed of the synthetic elastomer and compliant electrode layers, which are put on both sides of the elastomer. The circular actuator has one hole inside it to facilitate fabrication. The actuator is built by stacking the individual circular actuator units and forming electrical connections between the basic units. In order 

In the simulation, all the dimensions of the inactive-regions (boundary widths) of the actuator are 0.5 mm, while the areas and thicknesses of the active region are similar to those for the circular actuator. According to the simulation results shown in Fig. 7.11, the trapezoidal actuator exhibits bet- 

10 Analysis of trapezoidal actuator units (the maximum value is 0.024576 mm). Reprinted from [Chuc et al. (2011)] with permission from IEEE, Copyright 2011. 

Based on the analysis results, multi-stacked rectangular and trapezoidal actuators were developed. These actuators were designed similarly to multi-stacked circular actuators, as illustrated in Figs. 7.12 and 7.13. 

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