Paper: Data Driven Modeling of Shape Recovery Behavior in SMP Laminates

September 25th, 2018

IROS 2018 Paper: Data Driven Modeling of Shape Recovery Behavior in SMP Laminates

Newly discovered and experimented Shape Memory Polymers (SMPs) are increasingly being used for application solutions in automotive, aerospace, construction and commercial field.

However, being a nascent field there is little knowledge on the shape recovery behaviour of laminates with an SMP film and there are only methods reported in the literature for quantifying the material behaviour.

Through various experimental data gathering and analysis, influences of different variables that affect the recovery behaviour of thermoplastic shape memory polyurethanes based laminates including ambient temperature (45 C and 65 C), material modulus, and adhesive strength have been investigated to develop a physical model to formulate the recovery behaviour of the material.

It has been identified that a fundamental optimisation problem that needs to be solved is to maximize the final angle recovery ratios and recovery rates of a material to increase the overall efficiency of a targeted SMP material.

In this study, we present early results on using data-driven machine learning to learn and predict deformation characteristics of such SMP laminates without explicit knowledge of the internal constitution of the laminar SMP material. Such data-driven approaches can be rapidly applied as a characterization tool for novel SMP material and shapes without having to perform complex physical modelling of material properties and structural influences to the foil deformation.

This project is sponsored by the CSIRO Future Science Platforms AIM program and it is a collaboration between the  CSIRO Data61 Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group and the CSIRO Manufacturing Division.

Click here to download the paper.

For more information, contact Dr Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay on tirtha.bandy [at] csiro.au

Ritaban Dutta, David Renshaw, Hong Yin, Daniel Liang, David Howard, Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay, “Data Driven Modeling of Shape Recovery Behavior in SMP Laminates” , Workshop on Soft Robotic Modeling and Control: Bringing Together Articulated Soft Robots and Soft-Bodied Robots in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, October, 2018.