Modeling and Experimental Tests for the Voltage-Induced Response of a Circular Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

This paper presents a framework to predict the voltage-induced in-plane deformation and stress of a circular dielectric elastomer actuator and its experimental verification. The actuator is fabricated by attaching an equal-biaxial pre-strained dielectric elastomer membrane to a circular frame and painting the circular compliant electrodes at the center of it. The Gent strain energy function is employed to characterize the mechanical behavior of the membrane. The principles for the stretch and stress distributions in the actuator's active and passive areas are deduced. Then the boundary conditions are used to calculate the numerical solution of the system configuration. Validity of this method is tested by comparing the modeling results with experimental results in the radial strain test and the reaction force test.