Dielectric elastomers have received a great deal of attention recently as potential materials for many new types of sensors, actuators and future energy generators. When subjected to high electric field, dielectric elastomer membrane sandwiched between compliant electrodes undergoes large deformation with a fast response speed. Moreover, dielectric elastomers have high specific energy density, toughness, flexibility and shape processability. Therefore, dielectric elastomer membranes have gained importance to be applied as micro pumps for microfluidics and biomedical applications. This work intends to extend the electromechanical performance analysis of inflated dielectric elastomer membranes to be applied as micro pumps. Mechanical burst test and cyclic tests were performed to investigate the mechanical breakdown and hysteresis loss of the dielectric membrane, respectively. Varying high electric field was applied on the inflated membrane under different static pressure to determine the electromechanical behavior and nonplanar actuation of the membrane. These tests were repeated for membranes with different pre-stretch values. Results show that pre-stretching improves the electromechanical performance of the inflated membrane. The present work will help to select suitable parameters for designing micro pumps using dielectric elastomer membrane. However this material lacks durability in operation.This issue also needs to be investigated further for realizing practical micro pumps.
Dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) is a kind of soft actuators that can produce significantly large electric-field induced
actuation strain and may be a basic unit of artificial muscles and robotic elements. Understanding strain development on
a pre-stretched sample at different regimes of electrical field is essential for potential applications. In this paper, we
report about ongoing work on determination of area strain using digital camera and image processing technique. The
setup, developed in house consists of low cost digital camera, data acquisition and image processing algorithm. Samples
have been prepared by biaxially stretched acrylic tape and supported between two cardboard frames. Carbon-grease has
been pasted on the both sides of the sample, which will be compliant with electric field induced large deformation.
Images have been grabbed before and after the application of high voltage. From incremental image area, strain has been
calculated as a function of applied voltage on a pre-stretched dielectric elastomer (DE) sample. Area strain has been
plotted with the applied voltage for different pre-stretched samples. Our study shows that the area strain exhibits
nonlinear relationship with applied voltage. For same voltage higher area strain has been generated on a sample having
higher pre-stretched value. Also our characterization matches well with previously published results which have been
done with costly video extensometer. The study may be helpful for the designers to fabricate the biaxial pre-stretched
planar actuator from similar kind of materials.
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