2020 September - 46 articles
Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is a surgical technique that facilitates access to the internal tissues and organs of a patient’s body via a limited number of small incisions or natural orifice of the patients. Such a technique requires specia...
Therapy with robotic tools is a promising way to help improve verbal and nonverbal communication in children. The robotic tools are able to increase aspects such as eye contact and the ability to follow instructions and to empathize with others. This...
In this paper, static characteristics of a tilting five-pad rocker-backed journal bearing with an asymmetric geometry, i.e., different clearance for each pad, are investigated. A thermo-elasto-hydrodynamic (TEHD) model considering the elasticity of t...
This article describes a mathematical model simplification, designed to automate the iterative process of non-circular drilling with a precise shape. This model has been optimized for systems that already have experimental data for processing and ana...
To improve the stealth capability of a military aircraft, the reduction in core length is essential to reduce the heat signature and the noise characteristics of the engine exhaust. The efficacy of rectangular vortex generators in achieving these obj...
Machine-induced vibrations represent, for several reasons, a crucial design issue for industrial buildings. At the early design stage, special attention is thus required for the static and dynamic performance assessment of the load-bearing members, g...
Hybrid pneumatic–electric actuators (HPEAs) are redundant actuators that combine the large force, low bandwidth characteristics of pneumatic actuators with the large bandwidth, small force characteristics of electric actuators. It has been show...
For expanding the driving mode of the piezoelectric motor, a novel piezoelectric motor modulated by a magnetic field is proposed. This driving system combines piezoelectric driving and magnetic modulation together and can transform the reciprocating...
This paper shows the construction of a low-cost, open-source mechanical ventilator. The motivation for constructing this kind of ventilator comes from the worldwide shortage of mechanical ventilators for treating COVID-19 patients—the COVID-19...
In this paper, a new analytical method using Lagrange equations for the analysis of magnetic levitation (MagLev) systems is proposed, using Thomson’s jumping ring experiment. The method establishes the dependence of the primary and induced curr...
Inherent hysteresis behaviour of pressurized artificial muscles is complicated to understand and handle, calling for experimental research that allows the modelling of this phenomenon. The paper presents the results of the experimental study of the h...
Magnetostrictive materials are a group of smart materials with comparable properties to piezoelectric materials regarding strain and operating frequency. In contrast, the Curie temperature is much higher and the principle effect allows different actu...
The lack of suitable actuators has hampered the development of high-performance machines or robots that can compete with living organisms in terms of motion, safety, and energy efficiency. The adaptation properties of biological systems to environmen...
Soft robots and devices exploit deformable materials that are capable of changes in shape to allow conformable physical contact for controlled manipulation. While the use of embedded sensors in soft actuation systems is gaining increasing interest, t...
In the current clinical practice, the diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) draws on the qualitative evaluation of pain sensitivity thresholds which is affected by several source of uncertainties, due to an operator-dependent diagnostic protocol. Ta...
Pneumatic linear peristaltic actuators can offer some potential advantages when compared with conventional ones. Low cost, virtually unlimited stroke and easy implementation of curved motion profiles are among those benefits. On the downside, these a...
Active suspension systems help to deliver superior ride comfort and can be used to resolve the objective conflict between ride comfort and road-holding. Currently, there exists no method for analyzing the influence of actuator limitations, such as ma...
Specifications of actuators when interacting with biological systems such as the human body are entirely different from those used in industrial machines or robots. One important instance of such applications is assistive devices and prostheses. Amon...
This paper presents a self-contained micro-optical system that is magnification-controlled by adjusting the positions of the microlens in the device via pneumatic air pressure. Unlike conventional dynamic microlenses made from a liquid or polydimethy...
This work explores the extent of jet mixing for a supersonic jet coming out of a Mach 1.8 convergent-divergent nozzle, controlled with two short rectangular vortex-generating actuators located diametrically opposite to each other with an emphasis on...
In this paper, a two-loop fault-tolerant attitude control scheme is proposed for flying-wing aircraft with actuator faults. A regular nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) control is used in the outer attitude loop, and a finite time convergence incremen...
The purpose of this study was to determine how to improve the energy-harvesting properties of polymer electrolyte membranes by varying their porosity. We achieved this by applying microcellular foaming process (MCP) to Nafion-based ionic polymer&ndas...
This paper explores the new control strategy of an actively actuated eccentric mass system (AAEMS) for cancelling the rotor imbalance vibration. The AAEMS consists of an eccentric mass with an actuator that actively moves around the circular guided t...
The potential authors for Actuators must consider a wide range of scientific, technical, application, and economic issues in creating a useful paper of interest to the widest population of readers and decision makers [...]
Mobile robots that are required to climb inclined ferromagnetic surfaces typically employ magnetic wheels. In order to design magnetic wheels and to properly size the permanent magnet as magnetizing source without the need for finite element analyses...
An active mass damper (AMD) was developed that uses a linear motor and coil spring to reduce the vertical vibration of a long-period cable-stayed bridge subjected to wind and earthquake loads. A scaled-down bridge model and AMD were fabricated, and t...
This paper presents the design of a new flexure-based xy micropositioning stage with a large hollow platform, which is suitable for practical use with a microscope. The designed mechanism has a parallel-kinematic structure and is actuated by two voic...
Pneumatic linear peristaltic actuators can offer some potential advantages when compared with conventional ones. The low cost, virtually unlimited stroke and easy implementation of curved motion profiles are among those benefits. On the downside, the...
Active flow control of surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) plasma is a technology that converts electrical energy into kinetic energy to achieve flow control. Its main application areas are concentrated in the aviation field. Undoubtedly, few...
The technique of a larger volume of microparticle continuous separation in the acoustic field is proposed in this paper. This technique has got considerable potential with regard to the development of technologies for the portable, low-cost and non-b...
The actuation of silicone/ethanol soft composite material-actuators is based on the phase change of ethanol upon heating, followed by the expansion of the whole composite, exhibiting high actuation stress and strain. However, the low thermal conducti...
This research was derived from the experimental observation that hydraulic actuators are positioned on machines that are subjected to movements and whose dynamic actions, the accelerations, are very high; it is acceptable to think of an actuator for...
Conventional thin-film processing techniques remain inadequate for obtaining superior dense ceramic thick films. The incompatibility of ceramic films prepared via other methods, such as screen printing, spin coating, and sputtering, is a major obstac...
It is well established that the differential cylinder area in pump-controlled single-rod actuators creates the need of correctly switching the connections between the main circuit lines and a charge circuit, in order to provide means for equalising t...
As the internet of things (IoT) era approaches, various sensors, and wireless electronic devices such as smartphones, smart watches, and earphones are emerging. As the types and functions of electronics are diversified, the energy consumption of elec...
This paper has two main goals in the development of a novel flow-mode magnetorheological brake (MRB): (1) produce a mathematical model of a flow-mode MRB and (2) predict the torque density of the proposed MRB compared to the other type of MRB. In thi...
This paper investigated the performance of a semi-active tuned mass damper (STMD) on a multi-degree of freedom (MDOF) building model. A magnetorheological (MR) damper was used as a control element that provided semi-activity in the STMD. The Hardware...
Automatic mechanical transmission (AMT) with a gearshift assistant mechanism is a novel transmission architect concept aiming to improve the torque interruption and driveline jerk of AMT. During the shifting process, the shifting performance deterior...
This paper presents the technology to control the shape of thin polymer doubly curved shell structures with a unimorph layer of strain actuators to achieve high quality, light-weight, foldable space reflectors. The selected active material is PVDF-Tr...
The fundamental characteristics and performances of alternating current (AC) magnetic suspension using magnetic resonant coupling are studied analytically and experimentally. Nowadays, wireless power transfer to the suspended object is required durin...
In recent years, large structures, such as bridges, which are a type of social infrastructure, have been constructed with increasing traffic volume. For this reason, inspection and maintenance of social infrastructures, such as large bridges and tank...
The ever increasing adoption of electrical power as secondary form of on-board power is leading to an increase in the usage of electromechanical actuators (EMAs). Thus, in order to maintain an acceptable level of safety and reliability, innovative pr...
The study deals with the use of the driver’s brain activity for wireless remote control of the pneumatic actuator exerting pressure on the secondary foot brake pedal. The conducted experimental tests confirm that bioelectrical signals (BES) ind...
A tendon-driven robot offers many advantages, such as easy designs for mass distribution that facilitate dexterous motion. A procedure to design such a robot using a single actuator to achieve the desired force direction and magnitude on an endpoint...
Micro-positioning platform plays an important role in the field of precision positioning such as microelectronics, robotics and biomedicine. This paper proposes an equal-stiffness and equal-stroke 2D micro-positioning platform, which is driven by pie...
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