Stretching the Boundary: Shell Finite Elements for Pneumatic Soft Actuators

We simulate the responses of twelve soft actuators to pneumatic loading using shell finite elements, and compare the results to reference simulations performed on traditional volumetric meshes. We compare the wall-clock time required to preprocess and execute each simulation, and we quantify difference between the simulations using a custom accuracy metric.

We find that shell finite element simulations execute 7x faster on average, and predict the deformation modes that appear in reference simulations well, with maximum error less than 1/5 of actuator length scale. Frequency analysis on each mesh predicts near-identical deformation modes, and agreement between the simulations can be improved by linearly scaling pressure applied to shell meshes.