Equivalent dynamic thermoviscoelastic modeling of ionic polymers

Ionic polymers have attracted considerable attention due to their interesting sensing and actuating behavior which make them a proper choice for use in a wide range of applications including biomimetic robots and biomedical devices. The complicated electro‐chemo‐mechanical dynamics of ionic polymer actuators is a drawback for their applications in functional devices. Therefore, establishing a mathematical model which could effectively predict the actuators' dynamic behavior is of great interest. In this paper, a mathematical model, named equivalent dynamic thermoviscoelastic (EDT) model, based on thermal analogy and beam theory is proposed for dynamic analysis of bending‐type ionic polymer actuators. Then, the developed model is extended for analyzing the performance of the actuator in finite element software. The finite element analysis of the actuator enables consideration of material and geometric nonlinearities and facilitates modeling of functional devices based on the ionic polymer actuators. The proposed modeling approach is validated using experimental data. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.