Stretchability enables the device to be patched to a curved surface or to be folded several times to maximize usability. Among many methods, the pre-strain method is advantageous in that the stretchability as much as the pre-strain applied to the substrate is guaranteed even without material improvement. When the pre-strain is restored to its original state, the thin film gets wrinkled or the substrate gets buckled. Wrinkles and buckling that appear in this way are affected by the physical properties and dimensions of the substrate, and it is necessary to analyze their effect. In this study, a theoretical approach was used and a nonlinear post-buckling analysis was performed using a finite element method. The analysis was divided into two steps: the pre-strain step and the recovery step. According to the analysis results, it was possible to predict and analyze the wrinkle and buckling behavior due to pre-strain according to the physical properties and dimensions of the substrate. The pre-strain analysis method can be applied to multi-layer structures with three or more layers and can be used as a method to analyze wrinkle suppression and wrinkle shape control in future studies.

In recent years, many soft wearable robots have been developed to overcome the limitations of conventional rigid wearable robots. Among the types of soft robots, soft pneumatic actuators (SPA) have been developed because of compliant characteristics that can guarantee safe human-robot interaction to improve one of the rigid wearable robot limitations. Especially, among various SPAs, inflatable actuators have been developed because they can be easily manufactured with various types of structures. However, the theoretical modelings proposed in the inflatable actuators are specific to apply to other joints, because their purpose is performance analysis. In this paper, we improve the theoretical modeling for the design of wrinkled inflatable actuators. The actuator’s design parameters such as height and number of layers were determined by the proposed theoretical model to provide the target torque. The soft actuator was manufactured with determined design parameters and then measure the torque for the various angles and pressures. The theoretical torque values acquired through the proposed theoretical model have an error of < 8% from the experimental torque values and showed higher accuracy than the previously proposed model.

The development of the lightweight sandwich plate with periodically repeated cores is one of hot issues to reduce the weight of the part. The behavior of the sandwich plate under static and dynamic loads is greatly influenced by the design of the cores. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of the corrugated angle on low velocity impact characteristics of the lightweight sandwich plate with corrugated cores. The corrugated core with the fold surface is designed to improve the joining characteristics between cores and skin sheets. The corrugated angle of the corrugated cores ranges from 45o to 90o. Specimens are manufactured from the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process. The characteristics of the fabricated specimen are investigated. Impact experiments are performed using a drop impact tester with a stretching type of fixture and the hemispherical nose of the impact head. From the results of the experiments, the influence of the impact energy and corrugated angle on the failure pattern of the lightweight sandwich plate is examined. The effects of the corrugated angle on critical impact energies for different failure patterns are investigated. Finally, the failure map of the lightweight sandwich plate with corrugated cores is estimated.

The flexural characteristics of corrugated sandwich panels are anisotropic and depend on its corrugation geometry and load position. The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of corrugation angle and load position on the flexural characteristics of plastic sandwich panels with trapezoidal corrugated cores subjected to ASTM three-point bending via finite element analysis. The stress distributions at mid span have been plotted to determine the stress concentration at different corrugation angle and load position. The specific flexural stiffness and modulus have been estimated from the loaddisplacement and stress-strain curves, respectively. The failure of the specimen due to stress or strain limit has been examined via maximum limit stroke. Results have shown that the specific flexural stiffness and modulus improve as the corrugation angle decreases. The load position has influenced the flexural characteristics due to the occurrence of local bending and local tension.