Asian Scientist (Feb. 24, 2014) – An international team of scientists, including researchers in Australia, South Korea and China, has made powerful artificial muscles using ordinary fishing line and sewing thread.
The new muscles can lift a hundred times more weight and generate a hundred times higher mechanical power than the same length and weight of human muscle.
In their study, published in the journal Science, the researchers twist and coil high-strength polymer fishing line and sewing thread to cheaply make the powerful muscles.
Twisting the polymer fiber converts it to a torsional muscle that can spin a heavy rotor to more than 10,000 revolutions per minute. Subsequent additional twisting, so that the polymer fiber coils like a heavily twisted rubber band, produces a muscle that dramatically contracts along its length when heated, and returns to its initial length when cooled. If coiling is in a different twist direction than the initial polymer fiber twist, the muscles will expand when heated.
Compared to natural muscles, which contract by only about 20 percent, these new muscles can contract by about 50 percent of their length. The muscle strokes also are reversible for millions of cycles as the muscles contract and expand under heavy mechanical loads.
The muscles could be used for applications where superhuman strengths are sought, such as robots and exoskeletons. Independently operated coiled polymer muscles could also bring life-like facial expressions to humanoid companion robots for the elderly and dexterous capabilities for minimally invasive robotic microsurgery.
They could also power miniature “laboratories on a chip,” as well as devices for communicating the sense of touch from sensors on a remote robotic hand to a human hand.
The polymer muscles are electrically powered by resistive heating using the metal coating on commercially available sewing thread or by using metal wires that are twisted together with the muscle. For other applications, however, the muscles can be self-powered by environmental temperature changes, said Carter Haines, lead author of the study.
“We have woven textiles from the polymer muscles whose pores reversibly open and close with changes in temperature. This offers the future possibility of comfort-adjusting clothing,” said Haines.
The research team has also demonstrated the feasibility of using environmentally powered muscles to automatically open and close the windows of greenhouses or buildings in response to ambient temperature changes.
The article can be found at: Haines CS et al. (2014) Artificial Muscles from Fishing Line and Sewing Thread.
——
Source: UT Dallas.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
