Modeling Ionic Continua Under Multifield Conditions

Abstract

Recent advances in the development of electroactive polymer materials and composites along with the need for new multifunctional exploitation of these materials have underlined the need for the multi-field modeling of their behavior. Behavioral modeling of these materials is essential for design, material qualification, and material certification for sensing, actuation, and energy harvesting applications. The present paper proposes and applies a methodology for modeling the behavior of ionic continua under multi-field influence at the macro length scale. The computational implementation of this methodology addresses generation and solution of both the constitutive and the field evolution equations by appropriate use of continuum mechanics, irreversible thermodynamics, and electrodynamics. An application of this methodology for the case of electric multi-component anisotropic hygrothermoelasticity generates a constitutive model for a large class of materials capable of actuation, sensing, and energy harvesting applications. A specialization of this theory for isotropic and bi-component chemo-thermo-electro-elastic materials is provided along with the corresponding field equations. To demonstrate the capabilities of this approach for realistic applications, a system of nonlinear governing partial differential equations is derived to describe the state evolution of large deflection plates made from such material systems. These equations represent the electro-hygro-thermal generalization of the well-known von-Karman equations for large deflection plates and capture the actuating behavior of these plates. Finally, numerical solutions of these equations for two sets of boundary conditions are presented to demonstrate solution feasibility and realism of modeling in the context of actuation-based applications.