A normalization concept for smart material actuation by the example of hydrogels

For passive (classical) materials, stress and strain are used to extract the material behavior from the sample behavior in a tensile test. In analogy, the actuation behavior of active (smart) materials can be normalized. In the present research, we show the normalization using the example of hydrogels that react with a volume change (swelling and deswelling) when exposed to stimulus-changes like temperature, chemical concentrations, pH or light intensity changes. The normalized behavior can then be implemented with the Temperature-Expansion-Model which is based on the analogy of active behavior with thermal expansion. This allows the simulation of arbitrary active structures and the extraction of the sensitivity measure to a stimulus.