Investigation of the effects of PWM parameters on ionic polymer metal composite actuators

The effects of the PWM excitation signal parameters, such as frequency and magnitude, on the Nafion-based ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) actuator response were found out. The first set of experiments was designed to observe the actuator response when the actuators were biased with constant DC voltages. These experimental results were exploited to build an experimental data based dynamic model. The model and these results were also used as references to evaluate the experimental results in the proceeding experiments. The second set of experiments was designed to observe the actuator response when the DC square wave signals at different frequencies (0 to 1000 Hz) were applied. The third set of experiments was designed to observe the actuator response when the PWM signals at different magnitudes (6, 8 and 10 V) were applied. It is observed that back relaxation reduces with increasing frequency, but after a certain frequency value, it remains approximately constant. It is seen that the input output relationship of the actuators are linear only for a range of PWM signal magnitudes. The observations in both the PWM frequency and the magnitude experiments indicated that the performance of the Nafion-based IPMC actuator could be improved by selecting a magnitude of PWM signals between 6-8 Volts and by selecting a frequency between 400-1000 Hz.