Computational Modeling of Electromechanical Behaviors of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

This paper presents a computational system which describes a electromechanical behaviors of dielectric elastomer actuators. In order to consider the large deformations, hyperelastic models such as the Mooney-Rivlin and Yeoh model are tested. Furthermore, time-dependent mechanical behaviors of dielectric elastomers are simulated by using 4th-order Prony series. The material parameters of visco-hyperelastic models are determined from experimental results. In particular, the influence of the first and second strain invariants for the Mooney-Rivlin model has been investigated to determine the material parameters reasonably. The mechanical and electromechanical behaviors of dielectric elastomers under various loading conditions have been simulated by using ANSYS considering thickness dependence of the dielectric constant. The predictions of the Mooney-Rivlin model for overall actuations show a good agreement with the experimental data and the validity of the present model has been demonstrated.