1

1. Material Model:

In order to represent material property, many material models were

introduced. Mooney-Rivlin model is one of the models used for moderate
deformation Samples from Nitrile 75 Grade and Neoprene grade 40 materials are
prepared for the size 19.4 x 19.6 x 12.2 mm. Experiments are carried out in
compression testing machine and stress-strain relationship is obtained for each
piece. Least square fit is applied to the constitutive relationship and two parameter
Mooney-Rivlin constants are found as follows. For Nitrile C10=175 KPa, C01=53
KPa and Neoprene C10= 212 KPa and C01=48 KPa.

NEOPRENE 40

1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
STRESS (MPa)

1 True stress
0.8 points
0.6
0.4 Least square
fitted curve
0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
STRAIN

fig.1 Stress- strain relationship of Neoprene

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Nitrile-75

2.5

STRESS (MPa) 2

1.5 True stress

points
1
Least square
0.5 fitted stress

0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
STRAIN

fig.2 Stress-strain relationship of Nitrile

fig.1 and fig.2 shows the stress-strain relationship of neoprene and nitrile
respectively.

2. Soft Finger Models

There are two different models, a model with only hyper elastic material
and a model with a three layers.

2.1 Two dimensional model of only hyper elastic material:

Finite Element finger model is developed with radius 8.9 mm in ANSYS, a

popular FEA software since the human finger tip looks spherical in shape and axis
symmetric, a hemi spherical shape is used for FE model. The fig.3 shows the FE
meshed model of finger tip.
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fig.3 FE meshed model of finger tip

The finger is contacting a rigid plane made of steel and it uses four noded
plane quadrilateral axis-symmetric elements. Computed two parameter Mooney
constants are applied. The size of the element has been optimized to provide
enough resolution and it is also ensured that analysis is not to terminate due to
severe element distortion caused by small size of the element mesh.

The target surface is fixed at the bottom and the top nodes of the fingers are
glued so that the load acts over the all nodes of the top surface. Initial displacement
of a very small magnitude is imposed before applying the normal load. Once the
contact is established between the finger and the plane surface, the load is
increased gradually. During the displacement of the soft finger, the deformation
for each variation in load is measured at the reference node associated with the top
rigid surface. The area of contact is calculated based on the number of elements
coming into contact with the lower rigid plane. This has been done by writing a
macro code in ANSYS. For the solid soft finger, the analytical solution to find the
contact radius and contact force is given by using the geometrical relationship.

Contact force is given by

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f c   Ed 0 2
Contact radius is given by

b  (r  d 0 ) tan( max )
Contacting angle

r 2  (r  d0 )2
 max  tan 1

(r  d 0 ) 2

f c is d0
Where contact force, E is modulus of elasticity and is deformation

of the finger, b is contact radius, r is radius of the finger, d0 is deformation and  max

is the contacting angle. During the compression test, deformation is measured for
various loads from which contact force and contact radius are measured.

2.2 Two dimensional models with three layers

Another FE model is of three layers; First layer is of Neoprene (E= 156

Kpa), which is considered as the core of the soft finger. The second model is of
Aero gel (E= 1000 Kpa), which is considered to be the soft tissue. The third layer
is of a hyper elastic material, which is considered to be the skin of the finger. The
same two materials are considered for the third layer.

The fig.4 shows the meshed model of three layer finger tip.
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fig.4 Meshed model of three layer finger tip.

The same procedure is followed for this model also and the numerical
simulation is carried out for loads 0 to 20N. The layers are glued together and
when the load is given at the top of the finger, the displacement occurs in all
layers. But there is a negligible difference in deformation between layers due to
their material behavior. It is apparent that there is stick area in contact area for
some distance after which sliding takes place. The fig.5 shows a sample of the
contact zone.
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fig.5 Contact Status for load 4N

The contact radius is measured by counting the number of nodes contacting

the target surface.

3. Results and discussion:

The deformation of the finger is plotted in fig.6 Neoprene 40 produces more

deformation than Nitrile 70. It is also found that layers are glued together,
deformation on layers do not have much difference.
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fig.6 Deformation Vs Normal load

The fig.7 and fig.8 shows the contact radius of first model obtained from
the numerical simulation and the analytical solution. It is found from the graph that
the numerical simulation matches with the analytical solution given by [6].

5
C o n t a c t R a d iu s ( m m )

4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

Load (N)

Analytical Numerical

fig.7 Neoprene Model - Load Vs Contact Radius

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2.5

C o n tact R ad iu s (m m )
2

1.5

0.5

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Load (N)

Numerical result Analytical result

fig.8 Nitrile Model - Load Vs Contact Radius

Conclusion

Finite Element method is attempted for the analysis of three layer soft
finger tip. Deformation and Contact radius of the finger are studied. FE model with
only hyper elastic material is also studied and verified with analytical solution.
Neoprene 40 is better choice than Nitrile 70 for developing soft fingertip.

References

1. K. Dandekar and A. K. Srinivasan A 3-dimensional finite element model

of the monkey fingertip for predicting responses of slowly adapting
mechanoreceptors. In ASME Bio Conf, vol 29, pp 257-258, 1995.

2. K. Dandekar, B.I.Raju and M.A.Srinivasan. 3-D Finite-Element Models

of Human and Monkey Fingertips to Investigate the Mechanics of Tactile Sense
Trans. of ASME, Vol. 125, Oct. 2003, 682-691.

3. S. Shima, Y. Tatara, M. Lio, C. Shu, and J. C. Lucero,.Large

deformations of a rubber sphere under diametral compression JSME Int J.,
36(2):197-205, 1993.
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4. N. Xydas and I. Kao. Modeling of contact mechanics and friction limit

surface for soft fingers with experimental results. Int J. of Robotic Research,
18(9):941-950, September 1999.

5. H. Hertz. On the Contact of Rigid Elastic Solids and on Hardness, Ch 6:

Assorted Papers by H. Hertz. MacMillan, New York, 1882.

6. Kwi-Ho Park, Byoung-Ho.kim, and Shinichi Hirai. Development of a

soft Fingertip and Its Modeling Based on Force Distribution. Shiga, Japan.