The Rayleigh-Lamb wave propagation in dielectric elastomer layers subjected to large deformations

TL;DR

This paper investigates wave propagation in dielectric elastomer layers under large deformations, revealing how electric fields and pre-stretch influence wave speed and frequency, enabling potential control and filtering applications.

Contribution

It extends the Rayleigh-Lamb wave analysis to dielectric elastomers under large deformations with electric bias, introducing new insights into wave control in soft materials.

Findings

Wave phase speeds and frequencies depend on electric excitation and pre-stretch.

Electric bias fields can control wave propagation velocity.

Filtering of specific frequencies is possible through electric field adjustments.

Abstract

The propagation of waves in soft dielectric elastomer layers is investigated. To this end incremental motions superimposed on homogeneous finite deformations induced by bias electric fields and pre-stretch are determined. First we examine the case of mechanically traction-free layer, which is an extension of the Rayleigh-Lamb problem in the purely elastic case. Two other loading configurations are accounted for too. Subsequently, numerical examples for the dispersion relations are evaluated for a dielectric solid governed by an augmented neo-Hookean strain energy. It is found that the the phase speeds and frequencies strongly depend on the electric excitation and pre-stretch. These findings lend themselves at the possibility of controlling the propagation velocity as well as filtering particular frequencies with suitable choices of the electric bias field.