Bending analysis of a soft pneumatic finger using finite element method.

Many soft robotic structures are developed using soft fluidic actuators, which are developed using elastomeric materials such as silicon rubber. Due to the complicated geometries and nonlinearity in the soft actuator's design, it becomes very difficult to predict their behavior analytically. Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis is a numerical technique which is utilized to predict the stress, strain, and deformation in such actuators design. In this paper, bending behavior of two soft pneumatic fingers with varying wall thickness are designed and compared. Bending angle configurations of the designed fingers are evaluated at 30 and 40 kPa of actuating pressure. The obtained results show that to achieve a bending angle of 116 degrees, finger 2 requires 40 kPa of actuating pressure whereas finger 1 requires 80 kPa. Due to low stiffness of finger 2 as compared to the finger 1, which is resulted due to thickness variation in the two designed fingers, much higher bending angle configuration can be achieved at very low pressure for the finger 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]