Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Electromechanical Coupling Behavior Of Dielectric Elastomer Transducers, Jianyou Zhou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Dielectric elastomer transducers with large deformation, high energy output, light weight and low cost have been drawing great interest from both the research and industry communities, and shown potential for versatile applications in biomimetics, dynamics, robotics and energy harvesting. However, in addition to multiple failure modes such as electrical breakdown, electromechanical instability, loss-of-tension and fatigue, the performance of dielectric elastomer transducers are also strongly influenced by the hyperelastic and viscoelastic properties of the material. Also, the interplay among these material properties and the failure modes is rather difficult to predict. Therefore, in order to provide guidelines for the optimal design …