Engineering Commons^™

Effect Of The Nonlinear Material Viscosity On The Performance Of Dielectric Elastomer Transducers, Yuanping Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As a typical type of soft electroactive materials, dielectric elastomers (DEs) are capable of producing large voltage-induced deformation, which makes them desirable materials for a variety of applications in transduction technology, including tunable oscillators, resonators, biomimetics and energy harvesters. The dynamic and energy harvesting performance of such DE-based devices is strongly affected not only by multiple failure modes such as electrical breakdown, electromechanical instability, loss-of-tension and fatigue, but also by their material viscoelasticity. Moreover, as suggested by experiments and theoretical studies, DEs possess nonlinear relaxation processes, which makes modeling of the performance of DE-based devices more challenging.

In this thesis, …

Bouncing Dynamics Of A Class Of Mem/Nem Switching Systems, Mohamed Bognash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of the present research is to understand the bouncing dynamic behavior of NEM/MEM switches in order to improve the switch performance and reliability. It is well known that the bouncing can dramatically degrade the switch performance and life; hence, in the present study, bouncing dynamics of a cantilever-based NME/MEM switch has been studied in detail. To this end, a model of a MEM switch that incorporates electrostatic force, squeeze film air damping force as well as asperity-based contact force has been proposed for an electrostatically actuated switch. An actuation force due to piezoelectric effects is further included in …