Abstract
Abstract
Polypyrrole, a special class of smart material has gained attention as artificial muscle actuator propulsor due to its promising properties like light weight, flexibility, large dimensional changes with low operating voltage and natural muscle like working and performances. In this paper, a Polypyrrole actuator is fabricated and studied its behaviour and performances in underwater environment experimentally. The actuator is synthesized by electrochemical polymerization and fabricated as a trilayer strip actuator by using layer by layer deposition technique. Following the fabrication, the hydrodynamic bending performances like tip displacement, force and frequency and propulsion characteristics like thrust, power and efficiency are estimated by carried out the bending experiment in a water tank with zero flow velocity. Here the stiffness of the actuator also estimated from dynamic mechanical analysis as it is one of the key parameter which affects the thrust generation. The operation life of the actuator is estimated for underwater operation and analyzes the various parameters and their relation with PPy actuator performances to find the primary controlling parameters. Finally, the present actuator is compared with existing smart material based underwater actuator to study the feasibility of the actuator. From the present study, it can be believe that the proposed PPy actuator propulsor is suitable for underwater bio-inspired robotics motion and may use for various applications like scanning, surveillance and exploration.