Professor Ho-young Kim's research team presented the first model of thermodynamic interpretation of a soft engine system made by imitating plants and was selected for this month's APS News article.
APS News is publishedce a month and introduces about 10 of the most interesting research topics among all papers published in 16 journals (Physical Review Letters, Physical Review Applied, etc.) published by the American Physical Society (APS).
Professor Ho-Young Kim's research team focused the fact that soft material-based actuators, which expand when moist and contract when dry, convert moisture energy into mechanical work, and applied thermodynamic cycle analysis, which wasly applied to thermal engines, to soft material-based engines. As a result, it was confirmed that the thermodynamic efficiency of converting moisture energy into mechanical work in plants without muscles is much higher than that of other artificial systems that use moisture as an energy source. These research results are expected to be of great help in improving performance by calculating the efficiency of stimuli-responsive (heat, light, temperature, etc.) soft mechanical systems that are being actively developed in recent years.
The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Applied October 26, 2022 ("Thermodynamics of hygroscopic soft engines: cycle analysis and work ratio", Physical Review Applied 18, 044061 (2022)) and published in APS News November 10. APS News is available at: (https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202212/plants.cfm).