Performance of soft dielectric laminated composites

Gei, Massimiliano ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3869-7504, Springhetti, Roberta and Bortot, Eliana 2013. Performance of soft dielectric laminated composites. Smart Materials and Structures 22 (10) , 104014. 10.1088/0964-1726/22/10/104014

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Abstract

This paper contains a thorough investigation of the performance of electrically activated layered soft dielectric composite actuators under plane deformation. Noting that the activation can be induced by controlling either the voltage or the surface charge, the overall behaviour of the system is obtained via homogenization at large strains, taking either the macroscopic electric field or the macroscopic electric displacement field as independent electrical variables. The performance of a two-phase composite actuator compared to that of the homogeneous case is highlighted for few boundary-value problems and for different values of stiffness and permittivity ratios between constituents being significant for applications, where the soft matrix is reinforced by a relatively small volume fraction of a stiff and high-permittivity phase. For charge-controlled devices, it is shown that some composite layouts admit, on one hand, the occurrence of pull-in/snap-through instabilities that can be exploited to design release-actuated systems, and on the other hand, the possibility of thickening at increasing surface charge density.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Engineering
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Publisher:	Institute of Physics
ISSN:	0964-1726
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2022 09:17
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/74035

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