Silk Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (SPAM) construction for bio-medical engineering application

Abstract

The novel contribution of this paper is the application of natural fiber (Silk) as a braided sleeve for the PAM. A simple artificial muscle with internal core of silicon rubber netted by hand woven natural fiber (Silk) was fabricated. A suitable experiment was conducted to collect the displacement data which were produced by Silicon Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (SPAM) with various compressed air pressures. The advantages using Silk as braided sleeves are: it is naturally available with higher stiffness than that of steel and nylon. The movement of this actuator is soft which is similar to the human muscle; hence it is preferred for usage in bio medical engineering application and prosthetics devices.