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WELCOME! This blog is dedicated to the Group 5 of Section 72 for the Engineering Design Laboratory 3 in Spring 2014.

Project Overview

Problem Statement

          Artificial muscle fibers are needed for diverse applications, ranging from humanoid robots, prosthetic limbs, and exoskeletons to comfort-adjusting and miniature actuators for microfluidic "laboratories on a chip." However, performance, scalability, and cost problems have restricted their deployments.

         Scientists have developed artificial muscles out of carbon nanotube yarns. However, those are much complicated and expensive to manufacture.

Our Objectives

          To create the muscle fibers by using everyday use which is fishing line and sewing thread as they are cheaper, stronger and easier to commercialize.

           The figure above shows the micro images of a twisted sewing thread and fishing line that will form an improved thermally responsive muscle fiber. The fishing line used before it been coiled (Figure A) will then twist by driller to make coiled fishing line (Figure B, E & H). The coiled fishing line can be combine with other coiled fishing lines (Figure C & D) to make it stronger. The surface of the fishing line can be seen in Figure G.

       During the summer, the environment will get pretty hot as the surrounding temperature sometimes rises unpredictably. Imagine this, being in a building during summer that might have a terrible ventilation and you can’t barely breathe. This kind of situation is annoying. So, it is such a motivation to invent a solution to this undesirable situation. This solution relates to the application of thermally responsive muscle fibers on buildings' windows.

          Last but not least, the scope of this project is not limited to the windows only. This technology will be implied on a green house, hoping that it will become a sophisticated alternative to improve green house's ventilation system.

         In simpler words, this project will create Thermally Responsive Artificial Muscle Fibers Which Will Be Attached On Windows To Be Applied In Greenhouse. Can you imagine?