A Detailed Solution Framework for the Out-of-Plane Displacement of
Circular Dielectric Elastomer Actuators
Abstract
The out-of-plane displacement (OPD) of a circular dielectric elastomer
actuator (DEA) membrane has been explored in recent years for a variety
of important applications. Circular DEAs consist of an elastomer
membrane that is prestretched to a rigid frame and coated with compliant
electrodes. Such a simple configuration has found many interesting
applications such as in, pumps, pulse tracking, hopping search and
rescue robots, dielectric elastomer (DE) generators for renewable energy
harvesting, linear actuators, and many others. Here, we present an
easy-to-follow implementation of the OPD equations for circular DEAs via
a detailed numerical solution using the shooting method (SM) on a system
of differential algebraic equations (DAE), based on previous theoretical
work. The SM numerical solution to the system of DAEs is applied to a
practical range of values based on the reported literature. Analysis of
the results and comparison against other studies are provided. The
current work provides a go-to framework for implementation in further
research and development.