Related papers: Soft Electromechanical Elastomers Impervious to In…
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 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…
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 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…
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…
The archetypal instability of a structure is associated with the eponymous Euler beam, modeled as an inextensible curve which exhibits a supercritical bifurcation at a critical compressive load. In contrast, a soft compressible beam is…
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,…
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…
Soft actuators allow to transform external stimuli to mechanical deformations. Because of their deformational response to external magnetic fields, magnetic gels and elastomers represent ideal candidates for such tasks. Mostly, linear…
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…
This paper develops the equilibrium equations describing the flexoelectric effect in soft dielectrics under large deformations. Previous works have developed related theories using a flexoelectric coupling tensor of mixed material-spatial…
Nematic elastomers with a locked-in anisotropy direction exhibit semi-soft elastic response characterized by a plateau in the stress-strain curve in which stress does not change with strain. We calculate the global phase diagram for a…
A challenge in soft robotics and soft actuation is the determination of an elastic system which spontaneously recovers its trivial path during postcritical deformation after a bifurcation. The interest in this behaviour is that a…
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 propagation of waves in soft dielectric elastomer layers is investigated. To this end incremental motions superimposed on homogeneous finite deformations induced by bias electric fields and pre-stretch are determined. First we examine…
The model of Zhao and Suo can be readily generalized to predict the critical breakdown electric field $E_c$ value of elastomers with arbitrary elastic strain energy function. An explicit expression for $E_c$ is presented for elastomeric…
We investigate the stability of a circular electrodes-coated dielectric membrane under the combined action of an electric field and all-round in-plane tension. It is known that such a membrane is susceptible to the limiting point…
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…
Uniaxial elastomers are characterized by five elastic constants. If their elastic modulus C_5 describing the energy of shear strains in planes containing the anisotropy axis vanishes, they are said to be soft. In spatial dimensions d less…
Soft robotics requires materials that are capable of large deformation and amenable to actuation with external stimuli such as electric fields. Energy harvesting, biomedical devices, flexible electronics and sensors are some other…