Development of Fatigue Life Prediction Technology of Hydrogels

Wednesday, 16 October 2019: 16:00
Room 302 (The Hilton Atlanta)
T. Iijima (Yamagata Universty), G. Murasawa, M. Kawakami, and H. Furukawa (Yamagata University)
Various high-strength gels having strength of several Mega pascal have been developed, one after another by devising the internal structure of the gels. They have attracted attention as a new material. High-strength double network gel (DN gel) is a gel consisting of a hard 1st network and a soft 2nd network and have excellent properties such as super low friction, flexibility and biocompatibility. Particle double network gel (P-DN gel) consisting of powdered 1st network and 2nd network is a high strength gel capable of 3D free form fabrication by using a 3D gel printer. Utilizing these advantages, there are expectations for soft robot materials and mechanical materials. It is also important to grasp the amount of deformation of the gel and how much fatigued it is when the gel material is industrially used. Specifically, by attaching a fatigue monitoring device to a soft robot, it is possible to predict the optimum time to replace the parts. When it is used for mechanical materials, we need to judge on the necessity of emergency treatment. It will be considered to lead to comfortable use of things.In this research, we aimed to develop a fatigue monitoring device using hydrogels with reference to the internal structure and destruction phenomenon of P-DN gel. P-DN gels of various compositions were prepared and mechanical tests and evaluation of internal structure by dynamic light scattering were carried out to investigate the physical properties of these gels. As a result, the P-DN gel using super absorbent polymer (SAP) as the 1st gel showed the most suitable physical properties for use as a fatigue monitoring device.