• DOI:10.1126/science.1246906
• Corpus ID: 16577662

Artificial Muscles from Fishing Line and Sewing Thread

@article{Haines2014ArtificialMF,
  title={Artificial Muscles from Fishing Line and Sewing Thread},
  author={Carter S. Haines and M{\'a}rcio D. Lima and Na Li and Geoffrey M. Spinks and Javad Foroughi and John David Wyndham Madden and Shi-Hyeong Kim and Shaoli Fang and M{\^o}nica Jung de Andrade and Fatma G{\"o}ktepe and {\"O}zer G{\"o}ktepe and Seyed M. Mirvakili and Sina Naficy and Xavier Lepr{\'o} and Jiyoung Oh and Mikhail E. Kozlov and Seon Jeong Kim and Xiuru Xu and Benjamin J. Swedlove and Gordon G. Wallace and Ray H. Baughman},
  journal={Science},
  year={2014},
  volume={343},
  pages={868 - 872}
}

• C. Haines, M. Lima, +18 authors R. Baughman
• Published 21 February 2014
• Engineering
• Science

The high cost of powerful, large-stroke, high-stress artificial muscles has combined with performance limitations such as low cycle life, hysteresis, and low efficiency to restrict applications. We demonstrated that inexpensive high-strength polymer fibers used for fishing line and sewing thread can be easily transformed by twist insertion to provide fast, scalable, nonhysteretic, long-life tensile and torsional muscles. Extreme twisting produces coiled muscles that can contract by 49%, lift loads over 100 times heavier than can human muscle of the same length and weight, and generate 5.3 kilowatts of mechanical work per kilogram of muscle weight, similar to that produced by a jet engine. Woven textiles that change porosity in response to temperature and actuating window shutters that could help conserve energy were also demonstrated. Large-stroke tensile actuation was theoretically and experimentally shown to result from torsional actuation.