Evaluation of Circuit Models for an IPMC (Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite) Sensor Using a Parameter Estimate Method

The present study investigated a sensor system to effectively detect the bending angles applied on an ionic polymer metal composite sensor. Firstly, the amount of net charge produced by the motion of cations was correlated to the bending angle based on the geometric relationship between a flat and a bent IPMC, and the relationship was represented by linear and nonlinear polynomial equations. Secondly, several existing and modified R and C circuit models with a linear charge model were evaluated using the experimental data. Thirdly, the nonlinear charge model was applied to a selected circuit model, and the effectivenesses of the linear and the nonlinear charge models were compared. Finally, the sensor output signal was fed into the inverse model of the identified circuit model to reproduce the bending angles. This paper presents a simple data processing procedure using the inverse transfer function of a selected circuit model that successfully monitored various bending motions of an IPMC sensor.