Mechanical and thermal testing of fluidic muscles

The paper attempts to give a contribution about the mechanical and thermal behavior of fluidic muscles, through theoretical modeling and experimental tests. Fluidic muscles are innovative mechanical components particularly attractive for their flexibility and performances. In particular, braided pneumatic muscle actuators are a very significant development of the pneumatics, being able to operate in a wide range of environments and applied in a wide spectrum of industrial and non-industrial applications, providing a good control of force and position and showing excellent power/weight performances. But, on the contrary of conventional pneumatic actuators, artificial muscles operate under significant thermal gradients. Internal temperature distribution is conditioned by the size and is strictly related to the actual mechanical performances. Integrated mechanical and experimental testing implemented on an original test bench and are focused and discussed.