Viscoelastic performance of dielectric elastomer subject to different voltage stimulation

Junjie Sheng; Yuqing Zhang; Lei Liu; Bo Li; Hualing Chen

doi:10.1117/12.2255885

17 April 2017 Viscoelastic performance of dielectric elastomer subject to different voltage stimulation

Junjie Sheng, Yuqing Zhang, Lei Liu, Bo Li, Hualing Chen

Proceedings Volume 10163, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2017; 1016329 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2255885
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2017, Portland, Oregon, United States

Abstract

Dielectric elastomer (DE) is capable of giant deformation subject to an electric field, and demonstrates significant advantages in the potentially application of soft machines with muscle-like characteristics. Due to an inherent property of all macromolecular materials, DE exhibits strong viscoelastic properties. Viscoelasticity could cause a time-dependent deformation and lower the response speed and energy conversion efficiency of DE based actuators, thus strongly affect its electromechanical performance and applications. Combining with the rheological model of viscoelastic relaxation, the viscoelastic performance of a VHB membrane in a circular actuator configuration undergoing separately constant, ramp and sinusoidal voltages are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. The theoretical results indicated that DE could attain a big deformation under a small constant voltage with a longer time or under a big voltage with a shorter time. The model also showed that a higher critical stretch could be achieved by applying ramping voltage with a lower rate and the stretch magnitude under sinusoidal voltage is much larger at a relatively low frequency. Finally, experiments were designed to validate the simulation and show well consistent with the simulation results.

Citation Download Citation

Junjie Sheng, Yuqing Zhang, Lei Liu, Bo Li, and Hualing Chen "Viscoelastic performance of dielectric elastomer subject to different voltage stimulation", Proc. SPIE 10163, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2017, 1016329 (17 April 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2255885

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