Thermo-electro-mechanical instability of dielectric elastomers

Liu, Liwu; Liu, Yanju; Li, Bo; Yang, Kai; Li, Tiefeng; Leng, Jinsong

doi:10.1088/0964-1726/20/7/075004

Cited by 44 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thank to equations (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10), this energy can be computed. One can note that the pull-in instability is not occuring for Polypower elastomer thanks to its low chain extension limit and low dielectric strength as investigated in.…”

Section: Operating Limits For Dielectric Elastomer Generatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

New operating limits for applications with electroactive elastomer: effect of the drift of the dielectric permittivity and the electrical breakdown

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Dielectric elastomer generators are a promising solution to scavenge energy from human motion, due to their lightweight, high eciency, low cost and high energy density. Performances of a dielectric elastomer used in a generator application are generally evaluated by the maximum energy which can be converted. This energy is dened by an area of allowable states and delimited by dierent failure modes such as: electrical breakdown, loss of tension, mechanical rupture and electromechanical instability, which depend deeply on dielectric behaviors of the material. However, there is controversy on the dielectric constant (permittivity) of usual elastomers used for these applications. This paper aims to investigate the dielectric behaviors of two popular dielectric elastomers:VHB 4910 (3M) and Polypower (Danfoss). This study is undertaken on a broad range of temperature. We focus on the inuence of pre-stretch in the change of the dielectric constant. An originality of this study is related to the signicant inuence of the nature of compliant electrodes deposited on these elastomers. Additionally, the electrical breakdown eld of these two elastomers has been studied as a function of pre-stretch and temperature.Lastly, thanks to these experiments, analytic equations have been proposed to take into account the inuence of the temperature, the pre-stretch and the nature of the compliant electrodes on the permittivity. These analytic equations and the electrical breakdown eld were embedded in a thermodynamic model making it possible to dene new limits of operation closer to the real use of these elastomers for energy harvesting applications.

show abstract

Section: Operating Limits For Dielectric Elastomer Generatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

New operating limits for applications with electroactive elastomer: effect of the drift of the dielectric permittivity and the electrical breakdown

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent studies have shown when the DE membrane is infiated by air, the voltage-induced area expansion can be up to 1689% [16], and multiphase coexistence is observed [17]. However, high voltage has to be kept to maintain the strokes of DE actuators, which limits their practical application [6,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Electromechanical instabilities are harnessed to enhance the performances of DE actuators, including achieving large voltageinduced actuation [16,20] and multiphase coexistence [17]. In these approaches, DE actuators still require keeping the voltage to maintain their strokes [6,18,[22][23][24][25], which leads to high energy consumption and device failures [26,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electromechanical Bistable Behavior of a Novel Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

Li¹,

Zou²,

Mao³

et al. 2013

Journal of Applied Mechanics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

High voltage is required for the existing dielectric elastomer (DE) actuators to convert electrical energy to mechanical energy. However, maintaining high voltage on DE membranes can cause various failures, such as current leakage and electrical breakdown, which limits their practical applications, especially in small-scale devices. To overcome the above drawback of DE actuators, this paper proposes a new actuation method using DE membranes with a properly designed bistable structure. Experiment shows that the actuator only requires a high-voltage pulse to drive the structure forward and backward with electromechanical snap-through instability. The actuator can maintain its stroke when the voltage is removed. An analytical model based on continuum mechanics is developed, showing good agreement with experiment. The study may inspire the design and optimization of DE transducers.

show abstract

“…Our previous study indicated that the increase in temperature can markedly contribute to improving the entropy production and the critical nominal electric field of the DE [17] . Recently, Liu et al [18] studied the thermo-electro-mechanical instability of dielectric elastomers by employing a Mooney-Rivlin model, but used independently determined value for the dielectric constant. In fact, recent experiments on a VHB 4910 dielectric elastomer have shown that the dielectric constant drops linearly as area pre-strain increases at different temperatures and dielectric constant of the polymer is a function of temperature [19] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of temperature on electromechanical instability of dielectric elastomers

Sheng

Chen

et al. 2012

SPIE Proceedings

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The electromechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer is strongly affected by the temperature. Very few models accounting for the effects of temperature exist in the literature. A recent experiment showed that the variation of dielectric constant of the most widely used dielectric elastomer (VHB 4910, 3M) according to temperature is relatively significant. In this paper, we develop a thermodynamic model to study the influence of temperature on the instability in dielectric elastomer by involving deformation and temperature-dependent dielectric constant. The results indicate that the increase of temperature could improve the actuation stress and the electromechanical instability of the elastomer.

show abstract

Thermo-electro-mechanical instability of dielectric elastomers

Cited by 44 publications

References 49 publications

New operating limits for applications with electroactive elastomer: effect of the drift of the dielectric permittivity and the electrical breakdown

New operating limits for applications with electroactive elastomer: effect of the drift of the dielectric permittivity and the electrical breakdown

Electromechanical Bistable Behavior of a Novel Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

Effect of temperature on electromechanical instability of dielectric elastomers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About