TY - GEN
T1 - A two-stage optimization procedure for the design of an EAP-actuated soft gripper
AU - Zhang, Wei
AU - Hong, Jonathan
AU - Ahmed, Saad
AU - Ounaies, Zoubeida
AU - Frecker, Mary
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 ASME.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - An increasing range of engineering applications require soft grippers, which use compliant mechanisms instead of stiff components to achieve grasping action, have high conformability and exert gentle contact with target objects compared to traditional grippers. In this study, a three-fingered gripper is first designed based on a notched self-folding mechanism actuated using an electrostrictive PVDF-based terpolymer. Then the design optimization problem is formulated, where the design objectives are to maximize the free deflection ∆free and the blocked force Fb. A computationally efficient two-stage design optimization procedure is proposed and successfully applied in the gripper design. NSGA-II is adopted as the optimization algorithm for its capacity to deal with multiobjective optimization problems and to find the global optima with high design variables and large design domains. In stage one, computationally less expensive analytical models are developed based on Bernoulli-Euler beam theory and Castigliano’s theorem to calculate ∆free and Fb. Utility function is applied to determine the best design in the last generation of stage one. In stage two, 3D FEA models are developed, using the dimensions determined by the best design from stage one, to investigate effect of the shape of segment surfaces on the design objectives. Overall, the proposed two-stage optimization procedure is successfully applied in the actuator design and shows the potential to solve a wide range of structural optimization problems.
AB - An increasing range of engineering applications require soft grippers, which use compliant mechanisms instead of stiff components to achieve grasping action, have high conformability and exert gentle contact with target objects compared to traditional grippers. In this study, a three-fingered gripper is first designed based on a notched self-folding mechanism actuated using an electrostrictive PVDF-based terpolymer. Then the design optimization problem is formulated, where the design objectives are to maximize the free deflection ∆free and the blocked force Fb. A computationally efficient two-stage design optimization procedure is proposed and successfully applied in the gripper design. NSGA-II is adopted as the optimization algorithm for its capacity to deal with multiobjective optimization problems and to find the global optima with high design variables and large design domains. In stage one, computationally less expensive analytical models are developed based on Bernoulli-Euler beam theory and Castigliano’s theorem to calculate ∆free and Fb. Utility function is applied to determine the best design in the last generation of stage one. In stage two, 3D FEA models are developed, using the dimensions determined by the best design from stage one, to investigate effect of the shape of segment surfaces on the design objectives. Overall, the proposed two-stage optimization procedure is successfully applied in the actuator design and shows the potential to solve a wide range of structural optimization problems.
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U2 - 10.1115/DETC2019-98169
DO - 10.1115/DETC2019-98169
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85076462094
T3 - Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
BT - 43rd Mechanisms and Robotics Conference
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2019 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC-CIE 2019
Y2 - 18 August 2019 through 21 August 2019
ER -