Generalized electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomers

TL;DR

This paper develops a generalized method to accurately assess the electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomer actuators under various prestress conditions, improving upon previous approaches that only considered initial load stability.

Contribution

It extends existing stability analysis to include any prestress state, providing a more accurate tool for designing dielectric elastomer actuators.

Findings

Previous methods may mispredict stability at high prestresses

The new method aligns better with actual stability conditions

Improves design reliability of dielectric elastomer actuators

Abstract

We investigate the ture electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomer actuators by considering the competition between Maxwell and mechanical stresses. Existing researches based on the positive defiiteness of the nominal Hessian matrix addressed only the initial load routie stability, i.e., Born stability, in the absence of prestresses. We generalize this method to account for electromechanical stability at any prestress state. For large enough prestresses, we demonstatre that the previous method for Born stability may lead to predcitions that deviate considerably from the true results. The true method for electromechanical stablity can help the factual design of actuators constructed from dielectric elastomers.