Smart materials are capable of recognising environmental stimuli, processing the information arising from the stimuli, and responding to it in an appropriate manner. It is well known that smart textiles provide some interesting possibilities in this regard. Consequently, smart textiles based on artificial muscles polymer actuators will provide a breakthrough to many areas including soft robotics, prosthetics, and healthcare for the benefit of humankind. Therefore, it is a worthy attempt to work on artificial muscle designs to aid them in applications. This paper presents the effect of fibre arrangement within a material structure for force and stroke generation. A method of fabrication, characterisation of actuating textiles was presented with experimental results. Most importantly, a modelling was carried out to develop equations to calculate the force and stroke of actuating textiles which has not been reported to date. A reasonable agreement was found between calculated and measured force/stroke curves of both woven and knitted textiles. The woven textile exhibited a force enhancement directly proportional to the number of actuators while retaining the same strain of the single actuator. Nonetheless, the force and strain of knitted textile were highly dependent on the number of wales and courses per unit length. The fabricated knitted textile showed a lesser strain than the single actuator with a force amplification. However, the performance parameters of as fabricated knitted textiles were higher than the fabricated woven textile. Finally a practical applications, process for bulk manufacturing of silicone coated actuators was proposed to enable them in commercialised products and long length production. This study will enable developers to select the fibre architectures and suitable actuators to suit a particular end requirement.

智能材料能够识别环境刺激，处理由刺激产生的信息并以适当的方式对其做出响应。众所周知，智能纺织品在这方面提供了一些有趣的可能性。因此，基于人造肌肉聚合物致动器的智能纺织品将为包括软机器人，假肢和医疗保健在内的许多领域带来突破，造福全人类。因此，进行人工肌肉设计以在应用中提供帮助是一个值得尝试的尝试。本文介绍了纤维排列在材料结构中对力和行程产生的影响。实验结果表明了一种制造，表征驱动纺织品的方法。最重要的是，进行了建模以开发方程式，以计算致动纺织品的力和行程，迄今为止尚未报道。在机织和针织纺织品的计算得出的和测得的力/行程曲线之间找到了合理的一致性。机织纺织品表现出的力增强与致动器的数量成正比，同时保持了单个致动器的相同应变。尽管如此，针织纺织品的力和应变在很大程度上取决于每单位长度的纵行数和横列数。制成的针织纺织品比带有力放大作用的单个致动器显示出较小的应变。但是，制成的针织纺织品的性能参数高于制成的机织纺织品。最后是实际应用，提出了批量制造有机硅涂层致动器的方法，以使其能够实现商业化产品和长距离生产。这项研究将使开发人员能够选择光纤架构和合适的执行器来满足特定的最终要求。