Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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A comparison of plane, slow pneu-net, and fast pneu-net designs of soft

pneumatic actuators based on bending behavior
Narendra Gariya ⇑, Pushpendra Kumar
Graphic Era Deemed To Be University, Dehradun-248002, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Soft robots are developed getting inspired by the bio-living organism. These robots require soft actuators
Available online 11 July 2022 such as pneumatic, hydraulic, electro-active polymer and shape-memory materials for their actuations.
Out of these actuators, soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) are the most commonly utilized actuators due
Keywords: to their lightweight and high output at very low actuating pressure. SPAs are developed using hyperelas-
Soft robotics tic materials such as silicon rubber; some commercially available hyperelastic materials are ecoflex, dra-
Soft pneumatic actuator gon skin, and elastosil. The present work focuses on analyzing three different designs of SPAs considering
Hyperelastic materials
ecoflex material. The mechanical properties of ecoflex are evaluated experimentally. Three SPAs designs
Ecoflex
Finite element analysis
including plane, soft pneu-net (sPN), and fast pneu-net (fPN) are computationally analyzed and compared
Bending actuator based on their bending behavior under similar loading and boundary conditions. For computational anal-
Pneu-nets ysis, finite element theory is utilized considering the Ogden model for hyperelastic materials. Obtained
simulation results depict that for similar loading and boundary conditions, the SPA with fPN design cre-
ates a larger bending angle compared to plane and sPN designs.
Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2022 International Con-
ference on Materials and Sustainable Manufacturing Technology.

1. Introduction
Soft pneumatic actuators with internal hollow structures (also
known as Pneu-Nets) are developed using highly stretchable
hyperelastic materials such as ecoflex, elastosil, dragon skin, and
many more. Under actuating pressure they follow a predefined
motion [1]. Their response depends on their morphology and the
materials used to fabricate them. A strain limiting layer, which is
flexible and inextensible, in the form of fabric or paper at the bot-
tom layer has been introduced. It will resist the elongation and cre-
ates a bending configuration that is analogous to a human finger.
These types of soft actuators are commonly used as soft finger grip-
pers, which can hold intricate shape objects easily and can adapt
themselves according to the target profile or outer surface [2,3].
Additionally, hyperelastic material used for their fabrication allows
the safe grasping and handling of soft objects without causing any
damage to their surface [4]. On the other hand, due to non-linear
properties of hyperelastic material (used to fabricate SPAs) are very
difficult to model [5]. The computational simulation for different
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: navigk05@gmail.com (N. Gariya).
SPAs has been carried out using finite element theory such as FE
analysis of cylindrical SPAs for non-invasive surgery [6,8]. The
rotary and bending SPAs are geometrically characterized by per-
forming experiments [7]. The mathematical or analytical model
of fiber-reinforced SPA [10] and snake-like bending SPA [9] has
been reported. The main problem associated with analytic and
FEA modeling is the requirement of an accurate material model
and relevant material parameters, which can precisely predict
the non-linear behavior of hyperelastic material. This modeling
becomes much more complex when SPAs are made up of more
than one type of material and are provided with re-enforcements.
In the existing literature, analytical modeling and FEA simula-
tions are carried out for the bending SPAs. In this work, different
structures of soft pneumatic bending actuators are considered for
FEA simulation such as plane and corrugated structures. The focus
is on simulating pneumatic structures having the same length but
a different number of hollow chambers. Three different structures
are modeled which are, a structure having one chamber (plane
structure), ten chamber structures also known as sPN actuator
(slow PneuNet), and ten chamber actuators also known as fPN (fast
PneuNet). Although, loading and boundary conditions for all the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2022.06.576
2214-7853/Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2022 International Conference on Materials and Sustainable Manufacturing Technology.
N. Gariya and P. Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805

actuators are kept similar. Results for the three actuators are com-
pared in terms of bending behavior and stress distribution.
The present work is organized in the following sections: Sec-
tion 1 provides the introduction of the work; the computer aided
design (CAD) models of three different designs of actuators are
developed in Section 2; in Section 3, the properties of the hypere-
lastic material are discussed along with the material model, then
the finite element method (FEM) based analysis is conducted;
results are discussed in Section 4; finally, the paper is concluded
in Section 5.

2. CAD model

Three soft actuator structures have been modeled using the

design software - SolidWorks. Indeed, there are many other CAD
software are available, but in this work SolidWorks is utilized. Fig. 2. (a) Side, (b) Front, and (c) Isometric view of sPN actuator (A2).
The length, width, and height of the soft actuators are kept the
same and taken from the literature [10], which are 100 mm,
20 mm, and 19 mm. All three structures have different numbers
of chambers. They are referred to as A1- for an actuator with one
chamber or plane structure, A2-for sPN actuator with ten cham-
bers, and A3-for fPN actuator with ten chambers.
In Fig. 1, different views (top, side, and isometric view) of the
soft plane actuator are shown, the sidewall thickness is taken as
1.5 mm whereas the top wall thickness is 1 mm. To vary the stiff-
ness, lower wall thickness is taken as 2 mm. This difference in the
stiffness causes the actuator’s bend in the direction of the high
stiffness wall.
Fig. 2 presents the top, side, and isometric views of the sPN
actuator. Multiple chambers of 8 mm length are built through-
out the actuator’s length. Chambers are separated by walls of
1 mm thickness and are built inside the solid body. The upper
Fig. 3. (a) Side, (b) Front, and (c) Isometric view of fPN actuator (A3).
wall of the actuator is of low stiffness (1 mm thick) as com-
pared to the lower wall of high stiffness (2 mm thick). A small 3. Material properties
square hole of (2 X 2 mm) is provided in the bottom (above the
lower wall) of the actuator to allow airflow throughout the There are many hyperelastic materials available for soft actua-
length. tor applications, those are silicon rubber materials providing more
In Fig. 3 different views of fPN actuator are shown. Multiple flexibility. For this comparative analysis, any hyperelastic material
chambers of 8 mm length are designed throughout the actuator’s can be considered; thus in this work, Ecoflex SmoothON 0030
length. Chambers are separated by a gap of 1 mm. At the bottom hyperelastic material has been considered. The density of the con-
(just above the lower wall) an air passage of 1.5 mm thickness is sidered hyperelastic material is 1.049 g/cm3 [11]. For testing, the
provided throughout the length. The sidewall (1.5 mm thick) is sample was prepared according to the ASTM D412-06a in dog bone
much stiffer than the top wall (1 mm), in order to reduce the bal- shape. The length, breadth, and height of the test sample are 100,
looning effect. The lower wall (2 mm thick) is much stiffer as com- 20, and 10 mm, respectively. The uniaxial tensile test is carried
pared to other walls (top and sidewalls), which causes the actuator out using Instron 3365 universal testing machine (UTM). At the
to bend in the direction of the high stiffness wall. breaking point, tensile stress and strain are measured to be
0.01086 MPa and 3.05285 mm/mm, respectively. Therefore, at
the breaking point, the evaluated modulus of elasticity is
0.08203 MPa. There are many models for hyperelastic materials
including Arruda-Boyce Model, Marlow Model, Mooney-Rivlin
Model, Neo-Hookean Model, Ogden Model, Polynomial Model,
Reduced Polynomial Model, Van der Waals Model, and Yeoh Model
[12]. In this analysis, the Ogden model has been considered
because of its applicability at high deformation of the material. Dif-
ferent material parameters required for the simulation of the soft
pneumatic corrugated actuator for Ogden model with the strain
energy potential of order, n = 1, are a1 ¼ 0:548 and l1 ¼
4:807e þ 4 Pa.

3.1. Material model

Rubber or silicone rubber-like material comes under the hyper-

Fig. 1. (a) Side, (b) Front, and (c) Isometric view of the plane actuator (A1). elastic material. Hyperelastic material has the ability to elongate or

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N. Gariya and P. Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805

deform several times than its original length. At larger deforma- respectively. The boundary and loading conditions for all the three
tion, stress–strain behavior is non-linear and can be defined using soft actuators are kept similar (as shown in Fig. 5).
the strain energy density function (W). This strain energy density For loading conditions increasing air pressure is applied on the
function can be defined using different hyperelastic material mod- internal surface of the chambers or PneuNets. The air pressure acts
els which are Mooney-Rivlin, Neo-Hookean, Ogden, Polynomial, as a vector perpendicular to the inner surface of the hollow cham-
and Reduced Polynomial, Van der Waals, and Yeoh models. Out bers (as shown in Fig. 5). As per the boundary condition, soft actu-
of the stated models, Ogden hyperelastic material model has been ators are assumed to behave like a cantilever beam, where one side
utilized for the simulation purpose based on the material parame- of the actuator is kept fixed while the other side is allowed to move
ters evaluated from the experiment. The strain energy density freely. All the three soft actuators (plane, sPN, and fPN) are actu-
function for the Ogden model can be given by the relation [12], ated with the actuating pressure of 27 kPa and 28 kPa. Mostly,
Ogden Model: In this model, the strain energy potential is given the soft actuators are fabricated using elastomer or rubber-like
by, material, as a result, their mass is very low. Due to this low mass,
the effect of gravity on the soft actuator is negligible. Thus, for the
X
N
2l i  a a a  X N
1
U¼ k1 i þ k2 i þ k3 i  3 þ ðJ el  1Þ2i ð1Þ analysis gravitational force is not considered.
i¼1
a2i i¼1
D i

where, N is a material constant and li , ai and Di are the
temperature-dependent material constants. The initial shear modu-
P
lus, l0 ¼ Ni¼1 li; and the bulk modulus K o ¼ D21 .
U is the strain energy per unit of a reference volume, and
are the first and second deviatoric strain invariant and is given by,
ð2Þ ð2Þ ð2Þ
I1 ¼ k2 2 2
1 þ k2 þ k3 and I2 ¼ k1 þ k2 þ k3
The deviatoric stretches k
i are given by,
13
ki ¼ J ki
where ki are the principal stretches, Jel is the elastic volume ratio
and J is the total volume ratio. Only isotropic thermal expansion
is permitted in the hyperelastic material model, Jel ¼ JthJ , where J th
3
is given by, J th ¼ ð1 þ 2th Þ , and 2th is the linear thermal expansion
strain obtained from the temperature and the isotropic thermal
expansion coefficient.
3.2. Finite element analysis
Various tools for performing hyperelastic simulation, such as
Ansys, Comsol, Abaqus, Nastran, and many other tools, are avail-
able. For this hyperelastic analysis, the dedicated FEM software
called Abaqus has been employed. The developed CAD model of
the three different soft actuators (as shown in Figs. 1, 2 & 3) are
imported into the Abaqus in the IGES format.
Fig. 4 shows the three dimensional meshed model of A1, A2, and
A3 soft actuators. The 3D models of the actuator are meshed by
using CD10H elements from the tetrahedral group (as shown in
Fig. 4). The total number of elements, for the plane actuator, is
95474, and for sPN and fPN actuators are 137,422 and 168241,
4. Result and discussion
The numerical simulation is carried out using the FEM tech-
I I nique. The numerical model is solved using the hyperelastic mate-
1 2
rial model (Ogden). The soft actuator is assumed to behave like a
cantilever beam, where one side is fixed and the other side is free
ð2Þ to move. The bending angle measurement is carried out manually
using an instrument like a protector.
Firstly, all the three (A1, A2, & A3) actuators are actuated under
27 kPa actuating pressure. The soft actuator with plane structure
ð3Þ
(Fig. 6a) shows the ballooning effect. The top and sidewalls show
radially outward expansion of all walls. Due to the varying stiffness
of the lower, side, and top wall, the actuating pressure of 27 kPa
causes a small bending of approximately 6 degrees. In the case of
the sPN actuator (Fig. 6b), the air is distributed equally in all cham-
bers. It causes the lower, side, and top walls of the actuators to
expand radially outward. Under 27 kPa pressure, the sPN actuator
creates a bending angle of approximately 7.5 degrees, which is a
little bigger than the plane actuator. Finally, in the fPN actuator
(Fig. 6c), the gap between the chambers allows them to bend more
effectively even under low pressure. fPN actuator creates a bending
angle of approximately 103.5 degrees, which is higher compared to
the plane and sPN actuator under similar boundary and loading
conditions. Due to the expansion of the wall, the actuators are sub-
jected to high stresses. The maximum stress developed in the fPN
(A3) actuator is 103.1 kPa which is higher compared to the plane
(A1) and sPN (A2) actuator which is 99.7 kPa and 84.8 kPa, respec-
tively (shown in Fig. 7).
In the second case, all the three (A1, A2, & A3) actuators are
actuated under 28 kPa actuating pressure. The plane actuator
(A1) creates a bending angle of approximately 10 degrees whereas
the sPN (A2) and fPN (A3) actuator create a bending angle of 12

Fig. 4. 3D mesh model of all the three different soft actuators.

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N. Gariya and P. Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805

Fig. 5. Boundary and loading condition for all the three different soft actuators.

Fig. 6. (i) Bending angle configuration of (a) plane, (b) sPN, and (c) fPN soft actuator at 27 kPa.

degrees and 110 degrees, respectively. The bending angle created
by fPN actuator is very high as compared to the sPN and plane
actuator (shown in Fig. 8). During the development of high bending
angle, the maximum stress developed in the fPN actuator is
144.8 kPa, and stresses developed in the plane and sPN actuator
are 162 kPa and 128.3 kPa, respectively (shown in Fig. 9).
Based on the synthesis (in Table 1) of three (plane (A1), sPN
(A2), and fPN (A3)) different actuator structures, it can be con-
cluded that fPN soft actuator creates larger bending as compared
to the plane and sPN actuator, while simulated under similar
boundary and loading condition. For 27 kPa actuating pressure,
fPN actuator experiences maximum stress but under 28 kPa pres-
sure, plane actuator develops maximum stress.
5. Conclusion
The paper presents a comparative analysis of three designs of
SPAs based on the FEM for analyzing the bending behavior. The
actuator with a hollow single chamber i.e., plane actuator design
is subjected to a ballooning effect, which is nothing but the radial
expansion of the actuator body. This effect, even at the high air
pressure, causes a low bending angle. The plane structure (A1)
actuator creates a bending angle of approximately 6 degrees at
27 kPa, whereas, under similar loading and boundary conditions,
sPN (A2) and fPN (A3) actuator create a bending angle of 7.5
degrees and 103.5 degrees, respectively. The introduction of multi-
ple chambers allows air to distribute equally in all the chambers.

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N. Gariya and P. Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805

Fig. 7. Stress distribution in (i) Front view and (ii) sectional view of (a) plane, (b) sPN, and (c) fPN soft actuator at 27 kPa.

Fig. 8. (i) Bending angle configuration of (a) plane, (b) sPN, and (c) fPN soft actuator at 28 kPa.

But fPN creates a large bending angle of approximately 103.5 inside the solid body. But in the case of the fPN actuator, multiple
degrees which is larger than the 7.5 degrees created by the sPN chambers are built throughout the length and are separated by a
actuator. In the sPN actuator, multiple chambers are separated small gap (1 mm) between the two chambers. This small gap
by a thin wall of 1 mm thickness but all the chambers are built allows the fPN actuator to deform freely as compared to the sPN

3803
N. Gariya and P. Kumar
Fig. 9. Stress distribution in (i) Front view and (ii) sectional view of (a) plane, (b) sPN, and (c) fPN soft actuator at 28 kPa.
Table 1
Bending angle and stress values for three different soft actuator structures under actuating pressure of 27 kPa and 28 kPa.
Soft Actuator Actuating Pressure  27 kPa
Bending Angle
(Degrees)
Plane (A1) 6 99.7
sPN (A2) 7.5
fPN (A3) 103.5
actuator where multiple chambers are connected not separated.
Under actuation, while creating bending angle configuration, struc-
tures are subjected to very high stresses, where fPN is subjected to
highest value of stress for similar boundary and loading conditions.
On the basis of obtained simulation results, it can be concluded
that, for the same length and similar loading and boundary condi-
tions, fPN actuators are much better than sPN and plane actuators
in terms of bending angle, however, the stress is high. From the
future point of view, these actuators can be developed experimen-
tally and their performance can be compared practically.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Narendra Gariya: Conceptulization, Data Curation, Formal
Analysis, Resources, Software, Writing - original draft. Pushpendra
Kumar: Supervision.
Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Materials Today: Proceedings 65 (2022) 3799–3805
Actuating Pressure  28 kPa
Maximum Stress (kPa) Bending Angle Maximum Stress (kPa)
(Degrees)
10 162
84.8 11.5 128.3
103.1 110 144.8
Acknowledgment
The authors are thankful to the management of Graphic Era
Deemed to be University, Dehradun for its necessary funding for
the publication of this work.
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