Dielectric Elastomer Cooperative Microactuator Systems—DECMAS

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper reported the progress of a soft cooperative microactuator system, including the design, simulation and experimental results. It is well structured and presented. My comments are as follows.

1. Please add more discussions on the coupling effect of the multi-actuator configuration, in the simulation part, as proposed in Fig. 9. Currently, only a 1x3 array was reported.

2. I would recommend adding some literature on multiple networked DEAs, e.g., IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics 24 (1), 45-55.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your careful revision of our manuscript.

The 3x1 system is the current state of the reported project, an extension to 3x3 is planned for Phase 2 of the project. I made this a little clearer in Introduction and Outlook. We tried to highlight the coupling effects, which are present even for this version, in the experimental results discussion (text concerning Fig.2), and the modeling results (text concerning Figs. 3, 5, and 6).

Thank you for suggesting the paper on the 3x3 system, which I included as Reference [28].

 

Reviewer 2 Report

referee report 

actuators-2238895-peer-review-v1

Dielectric Elastomer Cooperative Microactuator Systems – DECMAS

Stefan Seelecke et al.

 

This manuscript describes a project report (first results) of a DFG SPP 2206 Cooperative Multistable Multistage Microactuator 

Systems (KOMMMA) project. The authors introduce their design concepts and a first soft single-actuator demonstrator, together

with some experimental characterization attempts. All this will be the base for future developments. Furthermore, a new 

methodology to fabricate metal-based electrodes of sub-micrometer thickness with high-membrane straining capability and 

extremely low resistance is described. All this fits nicely to the scope of Actuators.

The manuscript is well written and well arranged. The manuscript comprises 9 figures, no table and 27 references are given.

All figures are well prepared and clear, but all of them could be represented somewhat larger (full page width) and in some

figures, the bottom frame is missing.

There are only some remarks to be made:

(1) There should always be a space between a physical quantity and its unit.

(2) Some details concerning the modelling are missing (computer system, time for simulation,...)

(3) "3x1" should not be written using the letter "x", but the symbol (LaTeX: \times).

 

In summary, this project report can be published in Actuators with a minor revision.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your careful review of our article.

I fixed the plots as you suggested, and added the spaces in front of the units.

The simulations were performed on a standard desktop PC running Windows 10, but, unfortunately, we did not record the computation times. We will make sure to do this in the future!

WRT to the Latex symbols, I was using Microsoft Word, and I am not sure how to implement this. Hopefully, the publisher will be able to help! 

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript present a project report that regarding to the dielectric elastomer cooperative microactuator systems (DECMAS), which has the goal of developing a soft system combing high flexibility with large stroke/high frequency actuation and self-sensing capabilities. I think it can be published after addressing the following questions.

1，What't the thickness of PDMS film mention in the manuscript and how it affect on the performance?

2, Compare the Figure 2B and 2C, under the same displacement, why higher voltage gives lower force?

3, In the experiment, the voltage used are 2.7 KV and 3.3 KV, however, 3.5 KV was applied during the simulation. Is there any reason for this?

4, Are there any test results on the smart textiles application?

Author Response

Thank you very much for your thoughtful questions, which I try to answer below.

 

1，What't the thickness of PDMS film mention in the manuscript and how it affect on the performance?

The film used throughout the study is ELASTOSIL 2030 from the company Wacker. It has a thickness of 50 µm (mentioned on page 2), and it sets the voltage level due to the electric field induced Maxwell stress responsible for the actuation.

2, Compare the Figure 2B and 2C, under the same displacement, why higher voltage gives lower force?

The effect is due to the action of the Maxwell stress, which, by compressing the film, is making it softer in the membrane direction, hence the lower force at higher voltage.

3, In the experiment, the voltage used are 2.7 KV and 3.3 KV, however, 3.5 KV was applied during the simulation. Is there any reason for this?

Thank you for making us aware of this. It is the result of having published the data in different articles over the course of the project. The first one (Fig. 4) was used to show the design of a single Dome-DE system, whereas the second one (Fig. 6) focused on the lumped parameter version of the 3 x 1 system. We will make sure to synchronize this better in the future!

4, Are there any test results on the smart textiles application?

No, this is planned for the conclusion of Phase 2 of the project, which just started.