Abstract
Soft dielectric elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field enable applications such as soft robotics, biomedical devices, and energy harvesting among others. A key impediment in the use of dielectric elastomers is failure through instability mechanisms or dielectric breakdown. In this work, by using a group theory-based approach, we provide a closed-form solution to the bifurcation problem of a paradigmatical elastomer actuator and discover an interesting result: at a critical electric field, the elastomer becomes impervious to Treloar–Kearsley instability. This limit is reached prior to the typical dielectric breakdown threshold. Our results thus establish a regime of electrical and mechanical loads where the dielectric elastomer is invulnerable to all common failure modes.
Issue Section:
Special Issue: Advances in Nonlinear Mechanics: Special issue celebrating Richard James
Keywords:
electromechanics
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