Experimental Investigations and Numerical Simulation of Electrothermally Actuated Micro-gripper

B. K. S. Kishor[1], T. Ramesh [1],
[1] NIT Trichy, Tiruchirappalli Tamil Nadu, India.
Published in 2016

At the micron-level, thermal actuation exerts larger forces compared to the widely-used electrostatic actuation. To obtain large displacements at low voltage the principle of Electro Thermal actuation is used. It works on the principle of selective non-uniform Joule heating which results in thermal expansion due to constraints. The Microgripper presented here is studied and analyzed by carrying out design parameterization by varying thickness and Applied Voltage.