Stability analysis of dielectric elastomer film actuator

Abstract

Dielectric elastomer (DE) is the most promising electroactive polymer material for smart actuators. When a piece of DE film is sandwiched between two compliant electrodes with a high electric field, due to the electrostatic force between the two electrodes, the film expands in-plane and contracts out-of-plane so that its thickness becomes thinner. The thinner thickness results in a higher electric field which inversely squeezes the film again. When the electric field exceeds the critical value, the dielectric field breaks down and the actuator becomes invalid. An elastic strain energy function with two material constants is used to analyze the stability of the dielectric elastomer actuator based on the nonlinear electromechanical field theory. The result shows that the actuator improves its stability as the ratio k of the material constants increases, which can be applied to design of actuators. Finally, this method is extended to study the stability of dielectric elastomers with elastic strain energy functions containing three and more material constants.