Structural and material electro-mechanical instabilities in microstructured dielectric elastomer plates

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the stability of microstructured dielectric elastomer (DE) plates under electro-mechanical finite deformations. We examine the influence of the DE composite microstructure parameters on the stability of the DE composite plate. In particular, we analyze the DE plates made out of laminated ideal dielectric phases. We use an exact solution for the incompressible DE laminates to determine the effective material behavior of the composite plates. The corresponding micromechanics-based energy density functions are used in the subsequent analysis of the DE plate stability. The unstable domains for different materials compositions, volume fractions, and properties of the DE composite phases are determined. Finally, we compare these results for the onset of structural instabilities in DE plates with the material instabilities predicted based on the loss of ellipticity analysis.