Related papers: Surface Tension Effects on Surface Instabilities o…
We present a new finite deformation, dynamic finite element model that incorporates surface tension to capture elastocapillary effects on the electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomers. We demonstrate the significant effect that…
In the field of soft dielectric elastomers, the notion electrostriction indicates the dependency of the permittivity on strain. The present paper is aimed at investigating the effects of electrostriction onto the stability behaviour of…
Recent experiments have shown that surface stresses in soft materials can have a significant strain-dependence. Here we explore the implications of this surface elasticity to show how, and when, we expect it to arise. We develop the…
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…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
Surface stress, which is always neglected in classical elastic theories, has recently emerged as a key role in the mechanics of highly deformable soft solids. In this paper, the effect of surface stress on the deformation and instability of…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…
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…
Elastic effects in a model of disordered nematic elastomers are numerically investigated in two dimensions. Networks crosslinked in the isotropic phase exhibit unusual soft mechanical response against stretching. It arises from gradual…
It is widely appreciated that surface tension can dominate the behavior of liquids at small scales. Solids also have surface stresses of a similar magnitude, but they are usually overlooked. However, recent work has shown that these can…
Understanding and harnessing the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides materials design strategies for applications such as adhesives, coatings, microsensors, and biomaterials. Elastic deformation of compliant solids…
We examine the stability of a soft dielectric plate deformed by the coupled effects of a mechanical pre-stress applied on its lateral faces and an electric field applied through its thickness under charge control. The electric field is…
The contact between a liquid and an elastic solid generates a stress vector depending on the curvature tensor in each point of the separating surface. For nanometer values of the mean curvature and for suitable materials, the stress vector…
We propose a protocol to model accurately the electromechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer membranes using experimental data of stress-stretch and voltage-stretch tests. We show how the relationship between electric displacement and…
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…
A dielectric elastomer whose edges are held fixed will buckle, given sufficient applied voltage, resulting in a nontrivial out-of-plane deformation. We study this situation numerically using a nonlinear elastic model which decouples two of…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
Soft dielectric elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field enable applications such as soft robotics, biomedical devices, energy harvesting among others. A key impediment in the use of…
We investigate the finite bending and the associated bending instability of an incompressible dielectric slab subject to a combination of applied voltage and axial compression, using nonlinear electro-elasticity theory and its incremental…
We investigate the ture electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomer actuators by considering the competition between Maxwell and mechanical stresses. Existing researches based on the positive defiiteness of the nominal Hessian…