Thermo-electro-mechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer actuators: experimental investigations, modeling and simulation

Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) are elastic parallel plate capacitors consisting of polymers as dielectric layer and compliant electrodes’. In dynamic applications with high frequencies DEAs heat up. In this work the heating is studied by experimental investigations as well as by modeling of the visco-elastic behavior of the polymer and the specific electric resistance of the electrode and of the polymer. The experimental investigations have also been performed, in order to obtain parameters for the material model. A partially coupled thermo-electro-mechanical material model is presented and used for the numerical simulations. The experimental and numerical results for the time-dependent thermal behavior show an excellent qualitative correlation. This confirms the quality of the developed multi-field model.