Polyelectrolyte gels as bending actuators: modeling and numerical simulation

Polyelectrolyte gels are ionic electroactivematerials. They have the ability to react as both, sensors and actuators. As actuators they can be used e.g. as artificial muscles or drug delivery control; as sensors they may be used for measuring e.g. pressure, pH or other ion concentrations in the solution. In this research both, anionic and cationic polyelectrolyte gels placed in aqueous solution with mobile anions and cations are investigated. Due to external stimuli the polyelectrolyte gels can swell or shrink enormously by the uptake or delivery of solvent. In the present research a coupled multi-field problem within a continuum mechanics framework is proposed. The modeling approach introduces a set of equations governing multiple fields of the problem, including the chemical field of the ionic species, the electrical field and the mechanical field. The numerical simulation is performed by using the Finite Element Method. Within the study some test cases will be carried out to validate our model. In the works by Gülch et al., the application of combined anionic-cationic gels as grippers was shown. In the present research for an applied electric field, the change of the concentrations and the electric potential in the complete polymer is simulated by the given formulation. These changes lead to variations in the osmotic pressure resulting in a bending of different polyelectrolyte gels. In the present research it is shown that our model is capable of describing the bending behavior of anionic or cationic gels towards the different electrodes (cathode or anode).

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