Polymer gels that exhibit a change in volume in response to a small change in an environmental parameter such as temperature have been fabricated and studied for several decades. We have developed gels that change volume in response to an applied alternating magnetic field. These gels could serve as actuators in servomechanisms. This paper presents practical techniques for using closed-loop feedback to control the position of magnetically-triggered polymer gels. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate position control of two different types of magneticallytriggered gels using prototype power electronic drives.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Astrom, K. and B. Wittenmark. 1984. Computer Controlled Systems. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
2.
Dusek, K.1993. Responsive Gels. New York: Springer-Verlag.
3.
Haider, S. , T. Cetas, J. Wait and J. Chen. 1991. "Power Absorption in Ferromagnetic Implants from Radio Frequency Magnetic Fields and the Problem of Optimization", IEEE Trans. on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 39(11):1817-1827.
4.
Haus, H. and J. Melcher. 1989. Electromagnetic Fields and Energy. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
5.
Hemami, A.1985. "Studies on a Lightweight and Flexible Robot Manipulator", Robotica, 1:27-36.
6.
Hirose, S. and S. Ma.1991. "Moray Drive for Multijoint Manipulator", Fifth International Conference on Advanced Robotics, 1: 521-526.
7.
Hirose, S. , T. Kado and Y. Umetani. 1983. "Tenser Actuated Elastic Manipulator", Proceedings 6th IF To MM World Congress, 2:978-981.
8.
Hirotsu, S. and A. Onuki. 1989. "Volume Phase Transition of Gels under Uniaxial Tension", Journal of Physical Society of Japan, 58(5): 1508-1511.
9.
Hirotsu, S. , Y. Hirokawa and T. Tanaka. 1987. "Volume-Phase Transitions of Ionized N-Isopropylacrylamide Gels", Journal of Chemical Physics, 87(2): 1392-1395.
10.
Jackson, D. , S. Leeb, A. Mitwalli, P. Narvaez, D. Fusco and E. Lupton. 1996. "Power Electronic Drives for Magnetically Triggered Phase Transition Gels", IEEE Powver Electronics Specialists Conference, June 23-27, Baveno, Italy, pp. 302-309.
11.
Jackson, D. , S. Leeb, A. Mitwalli, P. Narvaez, D. Fusco and E. Lupton. 1997. "Power Electronic Drives for Magnetically Triggered Gels", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 44(2):217-225.
12.
Kassakian, J. , M. Schlecht and G. Verghese. 1991. Principles of Polver Electronics. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
13.
Leeb, S. et al. 1997. "Electromagnetically Triggered, Responsive Gel Based Drug Delivery Device", U.S. Patent #5,643,246, July 1, 1997.
14.
Li, Y. and T. Tanaka. 1992. "Phase Transitions of Gels", Annual Revielv of Material Science, 22:243-277.
15.
Linear Technology. 1990. LTC1043 Data Sheet, Linear Databook, pp. 11-15-11-30.
16.
Mathworks . 1997. MATLAB Student Version 5. 0. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
17.
Matsuo, E. and T. Tanaka. 1988. "Kinetics of Discontinuous Volume-Phase Transition of Gels", Journal of Chemical Physics, 89(3): 1695-1703.
18.
Mitwalli, A. 1998. Ph.D. thesis anticipated January 1998, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
19.
Mitwalli, A. , S. Leeb, T. Tanaka and U. Sinha. 1994. "Polymer Gel Actuators-Status Report", Universities Powver Engineering Conference, Galway, Ireland, pp. 871-875.
20.
Starodubtsev, S. , A. Khokhlov and V. Vasilevskaya. 1985. "Collapse of Polyacrylamide Gels: Effect of Mechanical Deformation of the Sample and the Type of Solvent", Akademia Nauk SSSR, Proceedings of Physical Chemistry Section280-282, pp. 484-486.
21.
Tanaka, T.1986. "Kinetics of Phase Transition in Polymer Gels", Physica A, 140A(1-2):261-268.
Thompson, M.1996. "Magnetically-Induced Heating Effects in Ferromagnetic Fluids", EECS Department Area Examination Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
