The purpose of this research is a development of simulation models of pneumatic steady flow through straight uniform tubes with heat transfer and wall friction. Assuming that the tube wall temperature and the inlet air temperature are constant, the air temperature inside the tube approaches to the tube wall temperature along the flow direction and the effect of the heat transfer becomes negligibly small at the downstream region far from the entrance. We developed the two models which simulate the flow in the heat transfer region and in the adiabatic region respectively. They are serially connected to model the whole flow in the tube. We made use of feedback control techniques to solve the equations which described the two models. In the experiment the compressed air was supplied from the constant temperature tank to the copper tube which was set in the water jacket to adjust the wall temperature. The pressure at both ends of the tube and the mass flowrate were measured. The usefulness of the newly developed models was verified by comparing the simulation results with the experimental results.

The liquid inside the McKibben Artificial Muscle is extracted using the elasticity of the expanding body. Therefore, in order for the muscles to contract, a large pressure exceeding the elastic force of the expanding body is required. In addition, the calculation of the contractile force exerted by artificial muscles is extremely complicated and difficult to predict. In this study, we proposed and developed a new artificial muscle (The EHD artificial muscle) with an EHD pump driving source that can generate bi-directional flow by applying the EHD phenomenon. By using the EHD pump as the driving source, the muscle can be relaxed without the elasticity of the expanding body. In addition, the structure of the EHD artificial muscle is simpler than that of the McKibben type, and it is easier to calculate the contraction force to be output.