Related papers: Failure mechanisms in thin electroactive polymer a…
The insurgence of compression induces wrinkling in actuation devices based on EAPs thin films leading to a sudden decrease of performances up to failure. Based on the classical tension field theory for thin elastic membranes, we provide a…
We provide a clear energetic insight into the catastrophic nature of the so-called creasing and pull-in instabilities in soft electro-active elastomers. These phenomena are ubiquitous for thin electro-elastic plates and are a major obstacle…
Thin elastic sheets and membranes are known to wrinkle when they are stretched -- the associated physics is highly non-linear. The mechanics of thin films that exhibit unusual behavior upon stretching, when they possess auxetic structure,…
Compression-induced buckling instability of metal thin films on a compliant base result in surface wrinkles. A stiff thin film, perfectly bonded to an infinitely deep pre-stretched dielectric elastomer (DE) substrate, is considered. Linear…
Active control of wrinkling in soft film-substrate composites using electric fields is a critical challenge in tunable material systems. Here, we investigate the electro-mechanical instability of a soft dielectric film bonded to a…
The recent discovery of electro-active polymers has shown great promises in the field of soft robotics, and was logically followed by experimental, numerical and theoretical developments. Most of these studies were concerned with systems…
Due to the increasing number of industrial applications of electro-active polymers (EAPs), there is a growing need for electromechanical models which accurately capture their behavior. To this end, we compare the predicted behavior of EAPs…
Pull-in (or electro-mechanical) instability occurs when a drastic decrease in the thickness of a dielectric elastomer results in electrical breakdown, which limits the applications of dielectric devices. Here we derive the criteria for…
Ionic electro-active polymers (E.A.P.) can be used as sensors or actuators. For this purpose, a thin film of polyelectrolyte is saturated with a solvent and sandwiched between two platinum electrodes. The solvent causes a complete…
Twisted and coiled polymer actuators (TCPAs) offer the advantages of large stroke and large specific work as compared to other actuators. There have been extensive experimental investigations towards understanding their actuation response,…
The fabrication of evermore sophisticated miniaturised soft robotic components made up of Electro-Active Polymers (EAPs) is constantly demanding parallel development from the in-silico simulation point of view. The incorporation of…
This paper presents the first MD simulations of a model, which we have designed for understanding the development of electro-induced instability of a thin toluene emulsion film in contact with saline aqueous phase. This study demonstrates…
A layer of dielectric elastomer can be voltage actuated to behave as actuators, but needs to avoid the electromechanical instability of excessively thin down accompanied with electric breakdown. We develop a true method to analyze the…
Functionalized thin elastic films and membranes frequently feature internal sites of net forces or stresses. These are, for instance, active sites of actuation, or rigid inclusions in a strained membrane that induce counterstress upon…
Periodic wrinkling of a rigid capping layer on a deformable substrate provides a useful method for templating surface topography for a variety of novel applications. Many experiments have studied wrinkle formation during the compression of…
High-density polyethylene (HDPE) thin films, while inherently ductile, exhibit poor flaw tolerance. Our experiments show that they fail prematurely not at the point of maximum stretch, but at the boundary of a necked region or notch-tip…
A paradigm for the study of wrinkling in elastic sheet is the Lam\'{e} configuration, in which azimuthal wrinkles form in an annular sheet subjected to tensile loads at both edges. Since wrinkles are spatially extended, this instability…
Actuation of thin polymeric films via electron irradiation is a promising avenue to realize devices based on strain engineered two dimensional (2D) materials. Complex strain profiles demand a deep understanding of the mechanics of the…
Soft elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field are essential for applications such as soft robotics, stretchable and flexible electronics, energy harvesting among others. The critical…
We investigate two destabilization mechanisms for elastic polymer films and put them into a general framework: first, instabilities due to in-plane stress and second due to an externally applied electric field normal to the film's free…