Additive Manufacturing of Soft, Smart Composites

柔软、智能复合材料的增材制造

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-04603
• 负责人: Sameoto, Daniel
• 金额: $ 2.84万
• 依托单位: University of Alberta
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=739785
• 关键词: Additive; Manufacturing; Soft; Smart; Composites

This proposal will be focused on the development of the manufacturing processes required to produce soft, adaptable materials with the ability to sense and respond to the environment. We focus on soft materials because the emerging field of soft robotics can be greatly improved through the use of multi-material additive manufacturing that combines metals, hard plastics and soft rubbers in a single process. Soft robotics promise to improve automation, manufacturing, medical devices, and rehabilitative medicine through the development of collaborative and intrinsically safe robots that can work in close proximity to humans. Soft robotics as a field has exploded in popularity over the past 10 years, although many enabling technologies, such as additive manufacturing, have been around for much longer. We aim to further develop new types of additive manufacturing that can directly produce soft, durable, and electrically active materials that can eventually duplicate or improve on human function. These smart and soft materials can find use in artificial muscles, skin-like pressure sensors, awareness of position in space, and self-healing capabilities. The basic technology to be used in this work is a multi-material extruder design that we developed originally for 3D printing of stretchable electronics. It combines internal features and external feeding mechanisms to extrude multiple materials at the same time, bond different plastics together through mechanical interlocking, and vary mechanical properties from very stiff to extremely soft within a printed part, similar to the way that bone is bonded to soft skin via intermediate stiffness connective tissues. The extruder also allows us to directly print hollow shell fibers, or filaments with an independent internal channel that can be filled with oil, liquid metals, and air. We therefor have a choice of directly producing liquid filled channels for hydraulic type artificial muscle fibers, embedded electrodes for stress and strain sensors, or air filled filaments for exceptionally lightweight and thermally insulating parts. Because the manufacturing technology was recently invented by our group, the proposed research program will be based on streams of fundamental discovery on the design rules and variations that can be achieved with the use of this technology, while a second research stream will be based on specific devices such as artificial muscles, sensing of soft material position and deformation via embedded liquid electrodes, and self-healing structures. We expect this research program to provide the material building blocks necessary to produce true human mimicking functions in soft robots which may eventually help augment human abilities or collaborate with people and will ultimately provide enormous economic and health benefits to Canadians with injuries, disabilities, or age related mobility issues who are projected to be an increasing proportion of our population.

该提案将集中于生产柔软，适应性材料所需的制造过程，以感知和响应环境。我们专注于软材料，因为通过使用多种物质添加剂制造，可以在一个过程中结合金属，硬塑料和软橡胶的多种物质添加剂制造，从而大大改善新兴材料。软机器人有望通过开发协作和内在安全的机器人来改善自动化，制造，医疗设备和康复医学，这些机器人可以紧邻人类。在过去的10年中，软机器人技术作为一个领域的流行爆发，尽管许多启用技术（例如增材制造）已经存在了更长的时间。我们的目标是进一步开发新型的添加剂制造，这些制造可以直接产生柔软，耐用和电动的材料，最终可以重复或改善人类功能。这些智能和柔软的材料可以在人造肌肉，类似皮肤的压力传感器，对空间中的位置的认识以及自我修复功能中找到使用。 这项工作中要使用的基本技术是一种多物质挤出机设计，我们最初为3D打印可伸缩电子产品而开发。它结合了内部特征和外部喂养机制，同时挤出了多种材料，通过机械互锁将不同的塑料结合在一起，并在印刷部分内从非常僵硬到极柔软的机械性能，类似于骨头通过中间刚度刚度结缔组织粘合到柔软的皮肤的方式。挤出机还允许我们直接打印空心壳纤维，或带有独立的内部通道的细丝，该通道可充满油，液体金属和空气。因此，我们可以选择直接产生液压型人造肌纤维，应力和应变传感器的嵌入式电极或空气填充细丝，以使其具有出色的轻巧和热绝缘部件。由于制造技术最近是由我们的小组发明的，因此拟议的研究计划将基于有关设计规则和变化的基本发现流，这些发现可以通过使用这项技术来实现，而第二个研究流将基于特定的设备，例如人造肌肉，例如人造肌肉，通过嵌入式液体电动电极的软材料姿势和变形，以及嵌入式液体电极和自我亲身性结构。我们预计该研究计划将提供必要的物质基础，以在软机器人中产生真正的人类模仿功能，最终可能有助于增强人类能力或与人合作，并最终为受伤，残疾或与年龄相关的流动性问题提供巨大的经济和健康益处，这些问题预计将增加我们人群的比例。