Foundation supports test setup with smart materials
With DKK 50.000 from the Fabrikant Mads Clausen Foundation, students and researchers will perform tests with smart materials – including the so-called artificial muscles.
Over the course of spring 2015, researchers and students of the Mads Clausen Institute will build a test setup with linear actuators consisting of smart materials. Linear actuators create movement in a straight line and are used in e.g. hospital beds, height adjustable desks and printers. Existing linear actuators are normally made of metal and plastic. The researchers and students of MCI will work with linear actuators consisting of smart materials – such as dielectric elastomer, or artificial muscles, made of a thin elastic polymer film.
The MCI research Group Applied Mathematics and Control has received the donation of DKK 50.000 from the Fabrikant Mads Clausen Foundation. With this amount of money, the research group will try to chart the actuators’ physical capacities by means of mathematical models. The students will conduct tests with the actuators based on the mathematical models, providing them with experience in building and analyzing experimental tests with mathematical modelling.
The aim of the test setup work is to produce a number of efficiency analyses of the different new types of actuators and to give an indication of the possibility of future use of the actuators in industry.
For further information, please contact Associate Professor Benny Lassen, ph. 6550 1687 or e-mail benny@mci.sdu.dk.