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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…
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) are a type of multifunctional materials with salient features that are very attractive in developing soft, lightweight, and small-scale transducers and robotics. This paper reviews the mechanics of soft DE…
The usual approach to the development of new nonlinear dielectric materials focuses on the search for materials in which the components possess an inherently large nonlinear dielectric response. In contrast, based on thermodynamics, we have…
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. However,…
Dielectric elastomers are widely studied for their use in robotic and medical devices due to their shape changing properties. Recently, they have also been incorporated into acoustic devices, motivating the development of an electroacoustic…
We present a novel approach to probe elastic properties of polyelectrolyte multilayer microcapsules. The method is based on measurements of the capsule load-deformation curves with the atomic force microscope. The experiment suggests that…
Soft electro-active (SEA) materials can be designed and manufactured with gradients in their material properties, to modify and potentially improve their mechanical response in service. Here, we investigate the nonlinear response of, and…
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…
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…
A microfluidic device is constructed from PDMS with a single channel having a short section that is a thin flexible membrane, in order to investigate the complex fluid-structure interaction that arises between a flowing fluid and a…
Dielectric elastomers have recently been proposed for various biologically-relevant applications, in which they may operate in fluidic environments where surface tension effects may have a significant effect on their stability and…
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…
Soft robots utilizing inflatable dielectric membranes can realize intricate functionalities through the application of non-mechanical fields. However, given the current limitations in simulations, including low computational efficiency and…
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…
Designing smart devices with tunable shapes has important applications in industrial manufacture. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear deformation and the morphological transitions between buckling, necking, and snap-through…
Dielectric materials are critical building blocks for modern electronics such as sensors, actuators, and transistors. With rapid advances in soft and stretchable electronics for emerging human- and robot-interfacing applications, there is a…
Dielectric elastomer actuators have become one of the most important smart material transducers in recent times. One of the crucial aspects in this field is the application of bias to find the best operating conditions. The basic task is to…
This paper presents an interaction control algorithm for a dielectric elastomer membrane actuator. The proposed method permits efficient exploitation of the controllable stiffness of the material, allowing to use the membrane as a…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
Dielectric interfaces are crucial to the behavior of charged membranes, from graphene to synthetic and biological lipid bilayers. Understanding electrolyte behavior near these interfaces remains a challenge, especially in the case of rough…