Constitutive and Structural Modeling of SMA-Driven Knitted Soft Actuator Unit Cell Under Large Deformation

Knitted soft actuators are a distinctive class of morphing structures in which macroscopic deformation is governed not only by the constitutive response of the loop but also by the kinematics of an interconnected loop network (Elahi et al., 2024;Kamalakannan et al., 2019).Unlike woven fabrics, where yarns are predominantly straight, and deformations are often dominated by shear and yarn sliding, knitted textiles contain many interdependent loops whose internal void space allows substantial changes in loop curvature, loop opening, and loop rotation.Consequently, knitted architecture can exhibit large, reversible deformation and pattern-dependent anisotropy, which is attractive for soft robotics, wearable systems, adaptive