Perpustakaan Digital ITB

This study investigates the impact of antagonistic pressure on the performance of a two-chamber soft pneumatic actuator designed for biomedical applications, specifically endotracheal intubation. The research examines how the actuator’s structural components, such as an embedded inextensible rod, influence stiffness and the relationship between antagonistic pressurization and the actuator’s bending angle and stiffness response. Experimental evaluations included stiffness investigations, bending angle response measurement under single and dual chamber pressurization, and antagonist co-pressurization stiffness response analysis. Finite element analysis (FEA) was also employed to validate the experimental results. Findings reveal that the inextensible rod contributes 54.26% of the design’s stiffness, significantly increasing the design’s stability. Single-chamber pressurization produced near-linear symmetrical bending responses, with chamber 1 achieving -84.7° at 124.2 kPa and chamber 2 achieving 87.1° at 126.6 kPa. Antagonistic co-pressurization revealed non-linear bending behaviors, including a threshold effect where the actuator maintains a constant bending angle as it is filled with an increasing antagonist pressure until it surpasses a critical value, and an unstable region when the antagonist chamber is just starting to influence the bending angle where the actuator could form an S-shape. The constant bending angle behavior allows for effective stiffness modulation, with the 30° bending angle variant achieving 95.4% reaction force increase. The actuator proved to be capable of precise and accurate control with relatively low RMSE to its single and double pressurization response.