Review on electro-mechanically coupled cyclic deformation and fatigue failure behavior of dielectric elastomers

The electro-mechanically coupled cyclic deformation and fatigue failure of dielectric elastomers (DEs) has attracted more and more attention in the design and life-assessment of related functional devices. Thus, to prompt the developments of soft robots and other related fields, the progress in the experimental and theoretical researches on the electro-mechanically coupled cyclic deformation and fatigue failure of DEs is reviewed in this work as follows: At first, the cyclic deformation and its evolution feature of DEs presented under the mechanical and electro-mechanically coupled loading conditions are summarized by specifically addressing the cyclic softening, ratchetting, fatigue failure and their electro-mechanical coupling effect; then, the existing constitutive models describing the mechanical and electro-mechanically coupled deformations of DEs are reviewed by discussing the capability of proposed hyperelastic, visco-hyperelastic and visco-hyperelastic-plastic constitutive models to reproduce the cyclic deformation of DEs and its electro-mechanical coupling effect; finally, the progress in the researches on the electro-mechanically coupled failure of DEs is outlined by addressing the low-cycle fatigue failure of DEs subjected to a kind of electro-mechanically coupled large deformation. Based on the comprehensive review on the existing literature, some topics are also recommended in this work for the future research, which are helpful to prompt the development of related fields concerning the DEs. © 2023 Advances in Mechanics.