Electromechanical response experiment and study of electroactive dielectric elastomer actuation

Polyacrylate dielectric elastomer is a smart actuation material within the family of EAP artificial muscles. Its discrete actuation property makes it promising for binary robotics and discrete robotic devices. Compared with electrostatic modeling, the mechanical behavior is more complicated due to both material and geometric unlinearity of the dielectric elastomer. This paper studies the basic electromechanical actuation of polyacrylate dielectric elastomer film 6100C and VHB4910 with comparison. Uniaxial extensions are performed to get their basic mechanical properties. Two commonly used models are further studied. The sensitivity of the models to prestrain and application feasibility in different deformation range are analyzed. The electro-mechanical actuation experiments on both VHB4910 and 6100C are performed using our new developed Integrated Driving and Image-based measurement system. Finally, the experiment result, conclusion and present and future work are provided.