BACKGROUND Intubation is frequently performed in intensive care unit patients. Overinflation of the endotracheal tube cuff is a risk factor for tracheal ischemia and subsequent complications. Despite manual control of the cuff pressure, overinflation of the endotracheal cuff is common in intensive care unit patients. We hypothesized that efficient continuous control of the endotracheal cuff pre...

Determination and analysis of vibration behavior of structures for at least first few natural frequencies and mode shapes needs several sensors to be connected at different non node points and exciting the structure at one point. Other method for determination of first few mode shapes is to excite several points of the structure at once and sensing the response from one point.  Both methods nee...

Controlling the occurrence of defects is a major challenge for manufacturing organizations that are seeking to enhance their competitive position in today’s global market. This paper considers the process of screen-printing T-shirts using hydraulic and pneumatic printing machines. Several defects in the output of this printing process have been observed, especially with multi colors printing as...

The ready availability of low cost microprocessors and mechantronic components allow industrial users to consider adopting servo-controlled pneumatic actuators with an acceptable cost. This leads to a demand for a software tool in pneumatic actuator system CAS/CAD. Therefore, the paper introduces a software tool developed by the research group in Liverpool for pneumatic actuator system computer...

Parallel robots exhibit high stiffness, low weight and low dynamic forces, mostly because of the closed loop chains implied by their structure, and allow the positioning of the actuators on the truss. These characteristics outline the possibility of actuating such kind of robotic devices by means of pneumatic actuators. The position control of pneumatic cylinders through proportional valves sat...

This work describes a method for the simulation of multiple pneumatic actuators in a context of multi body mechanical systems. The model of the single actuator is based on elliptical approximation of non-linear pneumatic devices; friction and sticking phenomena are considered as well. Pneumatic devices introduce forces and new state variables into the complete multibody system: we developed a s...

Pneumatic artificial muscles are pneumatic devices with practical and various applications as common actuators. They, as human muscles, work in agonistic-antagonistic way, giving a traction force only when supplied by compressed air. The state of the art of soft pneumatic actuators is here analyzed: different models of pneumatic muscles are considered and evolution lines are presented. Then, th...

In this study, a non-contact type intraocular pressure (IOP) measuring system using reflected pneumatic pressure is proposed to overcome the disadvantages of existing measurement systems. A ring-type nozzle, a key component in the proposed system, is designed via computational fluid analysis. It predicts the reflected pneumatic pressure based on the nozzle exit angle and inner and outer diamete...

Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are becoming more commonly used as actuators in modern robotics. The most made and common type of these artificial muscles in use is the McKibben artificial muscle that was developed in 1950’s. This paper presents the geometric model of PAM and different Matlab models for pneumatic artificial muscles. The aim of our models is to relate the pressure and length...

The utilization of pneumatic muscles in various industrial applications is still in an early phase, due to the relative newness of these components. In this paper the authors present results of the ongoing theoretical and experimental research on the operational behaviour of pneumatic muscles. Information is presented concerning muscle structure, as well as data on the generated forces, positio...