Pneumatic Soft Actuators
Physics: Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics
Software: Abaqus and FEBio
Audience: Three conference proceedings and two journal publications
In my capacity as a numerical modeling specialist at the Matter Assembly Computation Lab (MACLab) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, I developed a wide range of 1D, 2D, and 3D models of continuum soft actuators. These actuators are challenging to simulate for a variety of reasons:
Geometric and material nonlinearity
Dense and intermittent contact interactions
Hyperelastic, nearly incompressible materials
High-Performance Simulations
The best models strike a balance between two competing, antagonistic goals:
realism / accuracy
computational cost
I investigate the use of shell finite elements in simulating pneumatic soft actuators - this method strikes a more favorable balance between the two objectives than traditional volumetric FEA and helps speed up design exploration. Read more about this research.
Fast, accurate simulations enable computational design - the automatic production of mechanical design solutions that satisfy high level constraints. I built a computational design program around these scripted simulations of soft actuators, and asked it to produce strong, flexible soft actuator designs without any manual input.
The results were astounding - after running overnight, the program identified bending soft actuator structures that look very similar to geometries which took years to develop manually! Read more about this research here.
