Multibody analysis and design of an electromechanical system simulating hyperelastic membranes

This work presents the multibody analysis and design of an electromechanical system (named robotics membrane) able to replicate the nonlinear behavior of hyperelastic membranes. The designed robotics membrane is able to change its stiffness reproducing the deformation of different kinds of membrane. An actuator is controlled to adapt the length of the flexible elements, inside the robotics membrane, in order to modify the stiffness of the whole system. An analytical and numerical modelization in SimMechanics™ have been developed. The model validation has permitted to simulate the robotic membrane deformation in different load conditions in order to compare the results with the behavior of real hyperelastic membranes. The obtained results validated our system and underlined that our idea is concrete and applicable in the real environment.