"The effect of clamping pressure on the actuation performance of ionic polymer–metal composite (IPMC) actuators is newly investigated by carefully considering changes of mechanical stiffness and electrical resistance due to the interfacial contacts between the IPMC and clamping devices. During the clamping process, the soft ionic exchangeable polymer membrane will be squeezed along the thickness direction in the clamping area, resulting in a change of the mechanical stiffness of the cantilevered IPMCs. Also, the electrical contact resistance between two electrodes of the IPMC and the clamping device will be greatly changed according to the change of clamping pressures. Present experimental results show that clamping pressures between the IPMC and the clamping device will strongly affect the actuation performance of the IPMC actuators. An exact electro-mechanical model is developed to fully describe dynamics of the IPMC actuators by considering structural damping, hydrodynamic loading and electro-mechanical force. This study shows that there exists an optimal clamping pressure to obtain the largest bending deformation of the IPMC actuator because of a trade-off between mechanical stiffness and electrical contact resistance."

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