Wound roll dielectric elastomer actuators: fabrication, analysis and experiments

Wound roll electroactive polymer actuators fabricated with dielectric elastomer (DE) materials provide high bandwidth actuation for robots, minipumps, loudspeakers, valves and prosthetic devices. In this paper, we develop a DE wound roll actuator fabrication process that produces high strain (13%), reliable (3480 cycles at maximum strain), and stiff (157 N/m) actuators. An axisymmetric finite element method (FEM) model with electrostatic and radial bulk modulus nonlinearity predicts actuator displacement and stress. The maximum compressive radial stress occurs at the center of the innermost active layer. This layer also has the thinnest material, indicating the most likely failure point. The nonlinear model predicts actuator displacement in response to applied voltage and load, and matches experiments to within 1 mm.