Method to analyze electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomers

By Xuanhe Zhao, Zhigang Suo. 2007

486 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subject to an electric voltage, a layer of a dielectric elastomer reduces its thickness, so that the voltage induces a high electric field. The positive feedback may cause the elastomer to thin down drastically, resulting in an electrical breakdown. The authors show that the electromechanical instability occurs when the Hessian of the free-energy function ceases to be positive definite. Their calculation shows that the stability of the actuator is markedly enhanced by prestresses, agreeing with existing experimental observations.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9890b7a9bd929282e68d43c0dfb29a2a88883130

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Citations in the corpus

Theory of dielectric elastomers (2010, unknown): “已有的文献对圆形、球形、轴对称的薄膜都做了分析 [9 ; 30 ; 47 ; 80 - 85] , 这里我们简述用于研究任意构型介电薄膜的有限元方法 , 其中薄膜可与任意构型被动材料耦合联接 [77] .”
Soft robots based on dielectric elastomer actuators: a review (2019, background): “The uncontrollable thinning of the material is known as the electromechanical instability or pull-in instability [72, 73] and can be avoided by prestretching the membrane, as has been”
The static actuation of dielectric elastomer actuators: how does pre-stretch improve actuation? (2008, background): “It is recommendable to have the force–stretch curve end with strong stretch-hardening (by achieving one Ogden parameter α 4) in order to avoid the electromechanical instability that leads to breakdown [15].”
Instabilities in multilayered soft dielectrics (2011, background): “Recently Zhao and Suo (2007, 2009) and Zhao et al. (2007) used a similar bifurcation criterion to investigate electromechanical instabilities in homogeneous three-dimensional actuators subjected to loading conditions similar to those described in Section 4.1.1.”
Effect of mechanical pre-stretch on the stabilization of dielectric elastomer actuation (2011, result): “In a theoretical study, Zhao and Suo [10] proposed a free energy model, employing Neo-Hookean strain energy, to study the mechanical pre-stretch as a boundary condition of the dielectric elastomer.”
NONEQUILIBRIUM THERMODYNAMICS OF DIELECTRIC ELASTOMERS (2011, background): “Following our recent paper on the electromechanical instability of elastic dielectric elastomers [Zhao and Suo, 2007], this section analyzes electromechanical instability of dissipative dielectric elastomers.”