Related papers: Exploiting Instabilities to Enable Large Shape Tra…
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…
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…
Exceptionally large strains can be produced in soft elastomers by the application of an electric field and the strains can be exploited for a variety of novel actuators, such as tunable lenses and tactile actuators. However, shape morphing…
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…
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…
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…
Soft materials, such as liquids, polymers, foams, gels, colloids, granular materials, and most soft biological materials, play an important role in our daily lives. From a mechanical viewpoint, soft materials can easily achieve large…
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…
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…
This work investigates the morphological stability of a soft body composed of two heavy elastic layers, attached to a rigid surface and subjected only to the bulk gravity force. Using theoretical and computational tools, we characterize the…
Electroactive soft elastomers require huge electric field for a meaningful actuation. We demonstrate that this can be dramatically reduced and giant deformations can be produced by application of suitably chosen heterogeneous actuators. The…
This paper presents an in-depth examination of the nonlinear deformation induced by dielectric actuation in pre-stressed ideal dielectric elastomers. A nonlinear ordinary differential equation that governs this deformation is formulated…
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…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…
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…
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…
We analyse here the problem of large deformation of dielectric elastomeric membranes under coupled electromechanical loading. Extremely large deformations (enclosed volume changes of 100 times and greater) of a toroidal membrane are studied…
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…
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…
Thin dielectric elastomers with compliant electrodes exhibit various types of instability under the action of electromechanical loading. Guided by the thermodynamically-based formulation of Fosdick and Tang (J. Elasticity 88, 255-297,…