A portable modular vaccine injection system actuated by shape memory alloy

Abstract

In order to develop a vaccination system that have no contact with healthcare workers during highly transmissible epidemics, a portable modular vaccine injection system (PMVIS) composed of YT-type modules (YTM), winding modules (WM) and an active injector (AI) actuated by shape memory alloy (SMA) wires are proposed in this article. By series layout of WMs, YTMs and AI, the multi-posture requirements of PMVIS can be realized. Then, the thermodynamic model of SMA together with kinematic and dynamic models of structure for each module are established, and studied the output stroke of each module through numerical analysis and experiments. The results show that the designed YTM achieves a maximum output of 1.84 mm displacement or 1.9° angle under the given size parameters. After connecting 1-WM in series, the output displacement and rotation angle are enlarged to 12.12 mm and 10.8°, which are increased by 558.7% and 468.4%, respectively. PMVIS can realize multi-postures through different functional modules to play the role of position adjustment. It provides theoretical and technical support for future contactless injection systems.

Keywords:

• YTM
• modular
• shape memory alloy
• PMVIS
• vaccine injection system

Authors’ contribution

Xiaozheng Li: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Software, Experiment, Writing - original draft; Renjing Gao: Conceptualization, Supervision, Methodology, Resources, Project administration.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests in this article.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1808215 and 12172076). Xiaozheng Li was also supported by the State Scholarship Fund of China Scholarship Council (No. 201906060041).