Thermally stimulated artificial muscles: Bio-inspired approach to reduce thermal deformation of ball screws based on inner-embedded CFRP

Ball screws are the indispensable machine tool components and, as such, influence the positional accuracy of machine tools. The accuracy stability of machine tools is affected by thermal deformation of ball screws resulting from the increase in temperature. Inspired by the distinctive artificial muscle heat behavior, a bio-inspired ball screw was proposed. The proposed ball screw was based on the inner-embedded carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP), which restrains the axial expansion through the thermal contraction of CFRP. Additionally, a thermal conductor was mounted between the screw shaft and CFRP to improve the thermal conduction condition. Furthermore, both the simulation analysis and comparative experiments were carried out to compare the bio-inspired ball screw with the standard one. Two working conditions were considered to evaluate the effectiveness of the novel design, primarily in terms of reducing thermal deformation. Both results show that the proposed approach is effective and can be applied to reduce the thermal deformation of ball screws.